Watch what you say

“We must reckon that at least 25 per cent of the population of Bangladesh swears by the Jamaat-e-Islami and they are very anti-Indian and they are in the clutches, many times of the ISI.” These words by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are part of the record that his office has released on his informal talks with five editors a few days ago. Why a cautious person like him should be so indiscreet is beyond me and why the PMO has uploaded this portion of talks on the PM’s website leaves me confounded.

One, the following of the Jamaat-e-Islami is not one quarter of the Bangladesh population. In the last general election, the party was routed. Two, how has the prime minister come to the conclusion that all members of the Jamaat-e-Islami are anti-India? They are fundamentalists, no doubt, but every fundamentalist is not anti-India. The Jamaat has justifiably protested against the remark.

I have always held that the chiefs of IB and RAW who daily brief every prime minister are seldom accurate in their assessment. I cannot imagine that he would have spoken about the Jamaat without their inputs. Their sources are dubious.

The entire blame comes to the PMO which released the recorded talks without listening to them beforehand or reading the transcript. The office is meant to correct the version which might carry some words of prime minister that he spoke at the spur of the moment. He could not have meant the remark in the way it is being taken in Bangladesh. This is the reason why he has rung up Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and why the Ministry of External Affairs has offered the Bangladesh government an apology.

In fact, the five editors who talked to him for an hour have been more discreet before the media on what the prime minister said. The PMO, on the contrary, realised its mistake too late. After uploading the record of talks on the website, which remained for 30 hours, it withdrew the portion referring to the Bangladeshis. But the damage was done because the Bangladeshi media had gone to town on the PM’s remark.

The PM, tense as he is these days, is obviously under pressure. He is fighting against the opposition, the dissidents within his own party and the carping of the coalition partners. It is a welcome report that there will be wholesale transfers in the PMO. In fact, it needs to be pruned. Mrs Indira Gandhi expanded it unnecessarily because of the type of government she ran.

Naturally, the diplomatic circles are shocked because they do not expect such remarks coming from PM Singh who is a mature international statesman. India has a standing in the world and every word it says and the actions it seeks are taken seriously, not least by its neighbouring countries.

The Bangladesh PM, Sheikh Hasina, is doing everything in her power to come closer to India. PM Singh has himself acknowledged that “the Bangladesh government has gone out of its way to help us in apprehending the anti-Indian insurgent groups which were operating from Bangladesh for a long time.” PM Hasina has also given much-needed transit facilities to India. She has taken a number of steps to bring the two countries nearer economically. Indeed, the prime minister’s remark must have come as a shock to her.

Yet Bangladesh reacted in a mature manner. It summoned India’s High Commissioner to the foreign office at Dhaka to explain New Delhi’s position on the goof up. He reportedly assured that India’s relations were far deeper with Bangladesh than to be affected by a remark here or an indiscretion there.

Nonetheless, PM Singh’s words have come in handy to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other opposition elements which were only waiting for an excuse to take people on the streets. They want to put a spanner in Sheikh Hasina’s works to straighten things internally and with foreign countries, including India. Not everything she does is correct but that is her domestic problem, not ours.

Sometimes I have wondered whether there is a clique in the PMO which is purposely trying to blacken Manmohan Singh’s face. Even the formation under which the five editors were called was ill-conceived and ill-executed. It was a subjective selection by the PM’s press advisor who did not think in detail about how to meet the public demand for a more communicative PM.

Like so many other things in this government, this blunder by the PMO will too go unaccounted. Nobody will be held responsible because the PM has the reputation of being a soft person. He has seldom taken any action against the person who has made a mistake. Even in the matter of corruption, he has been forced to remove former telecommunications minister A Raja and former CWG chairman Suresh Kalmadi

Yet it would need a lot of explaining to the people in Bangladesh because they are far from pacified by New Delhi’s apology or the announcement that PM Singh will visit Bangladesh on September 7-8. The Bangladeshis are not an anti-India but this might be a lot to stomach.

The opposition leaders in Bangladesh, as it happens all over the world, react to certain situations to reap political dividends. But to dub them or a portion as anti-India is neither fair not correct. But then such are the inscrutable ways of the PMO which claims to be the custodian of PM Singh’s reputation.

The writer is a senior Indian journalist.