Khobragade case will be his first test.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Incoming Indian Ambassador to the US, S. Jaishankar, is set to arrive in Washington, DC on Monday amidst a heated diplomatic row regarding the arrest and treatment of Indian Deputy Consul General Devyani Khobragade, leading to questions of whether or not Jaishankar’s transition into his new posting will be smooth or troubled.
The Khobragade case has caused a furor between the US and India, largely from the latter’s side, who have decried the US for their “barbaric” treatment of Khobragade – treatment that allegedly involved a strip search – and have even taken measures in their own country to curtail the diplomatic rights of US envoys in New Delhi.
Jaishankar is succeeding Nirupama Rao, who left the posting in early November after serving as Ambassador to the US for two years. Jaishankar will not officially assume his position until after the Christmas break, leaving a gap of two months in which there was no actual ambassador in the US representing India – over these past two months, Deputy Chief of Mission Taranjit Sandhu has been holding down the fort at the Indian Embassy.
It remains to be seen if Jaishankar will be welcomed warmly by the US, or if relations have soured to the point that he’ll be looked upon unfavorably. Given, however, Secretary of State John Kerry’s relatively apologetic stance about the Khobragade incident, it seems that the State Department – and, by extension, the US government – won’t allow the case to get completely in the way of the US-India relationship.
A native of New Delhi, Jaishankar is the son of the late K. Subrahmanyam, a well-known Indian political pundit, analyst, and commentator who passed away in 2011. Jaishankar graduated from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi before going on to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where he earned his M.A. in Political Science, and his Masters of Philosophy and Ph.D. in International Relations.
Jaishankar joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977, and has since then held positing in several countries, mostly in eastern Europe and Asia. From 1990 to 1993, he was a counselor at the Indian Mission in Budapest, Hungary. He was then the director of Eastern European affairs in the Ministry of External Affairs.
From 1996 to 2000, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Tokyo from 1996 to 2000. He became India’s ambassador to the Czech Republic in 2000. He served as the High Commissioner to Singapore from 2007 to 2009, and is currently coming off his stint as the Indian Ambassador to China, which he held from 2009 to 2013, his longest posting to-date.
(Correction: A previous version of the article mentioned that Ambassador Jaishankar was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.)
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com