Everything you need to do to bamboozle the Indian prime minister
It is no coincidence that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is called Narendra Moody. Okay, fine he isn’t called that, but he really should be – and not only as a pun on his surname. He took a lot of wooing during this week’s SAARC Summit in Kathmandu.
I mean the first day Modi completely ignored our Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, pretending he didn’t exist. I can never forget the pictures that the Indian newspapers’ social media pages were sharing, especially since the Pakistani newspapers’ social media pages then shared the same pictures later on. There he was, our prime minister, walking away from the Indian prime minister’s seat as he pretended to read something. How rude. How moody.
But then the very next day, the happy couple were seen shaking hands, smiling and all. So it took Nawaz a day, but he did manage to woo Modi enough for a 10-second epoch, which was long enough to squeeze in three to four photographs for the media.
The whole episode got us thinking that granted Modi is, well, tediously moody, it’s not particularly hard to woo the moodiest of persons if you apply the right tactics. And the same is true for the Indian prime minister.
Here are five easy ways to woo Narendra Modi for Nawaz Sharif, or whoever our prime minister happens to be in the near future.
1. Don’t talk about Kashmir
That’s a massive turn on for Modi. Just don’t mention Kashmir, unless you’re telling the world how it’s an important part of India. And unless you’re Indian, or Hamid Karzai, it will be difficult to do that. Hence, the best way to go about step one is to not mention Kashmir at all, when you’re on a date with Narendra Modi.
2. Don’t, just don’t, mention Gujarat
Go in Holocaust denial mode. It just did not happen. There has never been any communal rioting in Gujarat. The Muslims of Gujarat have been the happiest bunch of people ever known to mankind. And don’t you dare mention the C-word. We were referring to ‘communal’ but what sprung up in your head was also accurate.
3. Say that India is a rising superpower
Tough, yeah we know, but it’s the tie-breaker more often than not with Modi. Just tell him that India is a rising superpower and that he will make it a superpower one day. And you’ve got him.
4. Tell him you hate Daud Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed
While you might already have perfectly plausible reasons to not like these two, you need to exaggerate it a bit more to win over Modi. And please refrain from any mentions of any extremists from any other religious communities – definitely not the Indian prime minister himself!
5. Praise India’s secularism
India has nailed secularism. And not just that, all kinds of secularism. Western secularism, Eastern secularism, Hindu secularism, Muslim secularism, all kinds of secularism. India is the breeding ground for equality and equal rights. There is not an inkling of religious turmoil in India – none, nada, zilch.
These are five of the easiest ways to ensure that you absolutely bamboozle Modi with your magic. We doubt that anyone has ever managed to trigger all five, definitely not a Pakistani.
So if you are the prime minister of Pakistan, you could just be returning from Kathmandu, or planning a little event for today, or who knows you might be wearing your favourite Superman PJs and enjoying the day off, please go through these pointers. This is all you need to know vis-à-vis any kind of diplomacy with India.
The writer is a love guru who is working on his first book ‘Love Diplomacy in South Asia’. All side effects of reading The Horizontal Column are the readers’ headache.
