NIRUPAMA RAO

The meaning of home for Tibetans in exile

This collection of Tibetan non-fiction writing is an inquiry into the nature of displacement, survival, loneliness and the ties of culture in exile

The Upside of Rivalry India's Great-Power Opportunity

The current state of global geopolitics presents India with a unique opportunity to represent and further the interests of the global South

C.B. Muthamma: How the legacy of India's first woman career diplomat transcends borders

C.B. Muthamma brought to her work the understanding that women need justice and visibility and that oppressive structures must be dismantled

Lessons from the last 75 years: India and China

A survey of relations between two Asian giants and prospects ahead

The loss of borderlands

The recognition of a shared habitat that was once common to our borderlands is alien to today's diplomatic negotiating agendas

BS-Seema Nazareth Award: Full text of ex-foreign secy Nirupama Rao's speech

Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao's delivered a speech at BS Seema Nazareth Awards function. Here's the full text of her speech. "It is an honor to be present at the Business Standard Seema Nazareth Awards function. In doing so, we remember a young writer and journalist, a creative and eloquent voice tragically snatched from our midst in her prime.

Standing By Family

The importance of crisis-ridden Sri Lanka from both the strategic and humanitarian point of view

Developments in Sri Lanka

A discussion on the Spotlight program of All India Radio

Diplomacy Today: A Woman's Agenda

The voice that women bring to diplomacy is distinct. Let the Women Speak.

Neil Nongkyinrih, a Musician and Friend Who Transcended the Divides of Cultures

"I am 16 going on 17, though I may look a little older": that was the quintessential, irrepressible, the one and only, Neil Nongkynrih. Our friendship dates back to the early 2000s beginning in Colombo, when Neil and the Shillong Chamber Choir performed at the Indian High Commission. We kept in touch.

The Case for Harnessing Soft Power, or Why India Cannot Be Insular

This is an abridged version of the second Krishna Bose Memorial Lecture delivered by Nirupama Rao, a former foreign secretary and ambassador of India, in Kolkata on December 26, 2021. It has been slightly edited for style. Power, throughout history, has been defined as the strength of the mighty and hegemonic, rather than the subtle magnetism of civilisational strength.

The Power of Soft Power

Second Krishna Bose Memorial Lecture, 26 December, 2021

Borderlands

Lecture at Majha House, Amritsar, 4 December, 2021

Nirupama Menon Rao (she/her) 🇮🇳 on Twitter: "My piece on #SriLanka in @htTweets today...

My piece on #SriLanka in @htTweets today pic.twitter.com/bcSLE7ZSZs

Nirupama Rao on America's need for wisdom and allies in Asia

Despite policy failures, the United States is required to counter China in the Inso-Pacific

ADDRESS AT RELEASE OF BOOK: 'THE MULTIVALENCE OF AN EPIC, RETELLING THE RAMAYANA IN SOUTH INDIA...

Addressing the universal meaning of the epic and how it resonates across land and sea boundaries

Afghanistan: A tragedy in many acts

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. The words of W B Yeats -- spoken a century ago -- that the worst are full of passionate intensity, while the best lack all conviction, come to mind.

Dealing with the Bigger Neighbour - China

Lessons to be learnt from the Russia-China partnership for India and China

The Indo-Pacific regional order: elusive equilibrium

Neither US-China rivalry nor unbridled Chinese hegemony is suited to a region made for multipolarity and middle players; neither is it what regional nations want. However, the dominant trends across the region do not suggest the arrival of a happy equilibrium any time soon.

Book Review

Book Review of A Matter of Trust: India-US Relations from Truman to Trump by Meenakshi Ahamed, HarperCollins 2021

Sunday Lounge | Why Barack Obama's memoir is a 'Baburnama' for our times

Barack Obama's memoir is titled after an African American spiritual which proclaims, "O, fly and never tire...There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land". The image of America, that City on the Hill, as a promised land eludes us today, as the author himself seems to imply at the end of this volume, after four years of trying to create a sense of common purpose in a nation beset by many contradictions.

Gender and Diplomacy

Remarks by Amb. Nirupama Menon Rao, Former Foreign Secretary at the ICWA-SAU Webinar on Women and Power:Gender within International Relations and Diplomacy in the Panel Discussion on 'Traditional Roles and Glass Ceilings', 16 October 2020.

A reincarnated battlefront with China shouldn't be blindly embraced : Ex-FS Nirupama Rao

ICSConversationNirupama Rao, former foreign secretary and former ambassador to China & the US, talks about the manner in which China's foreign policy has un...

Galwan: Postscript to a tragedy

The night of June 15, 2020 will go down in the annals of Indian history as one steeped in tragedy. Twenty Indian Army personnel, including the Commanding Officer of 16th Bihar Regiment, lost their lives at the hands of Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh.

Opinion | India and China: Forgotten Histories, Complex Present

To illustrate the first dimension, 1954, the year when Panchsheel made its much-heralded debut, marked the conclusion of the Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between India and the Tibet Region of China, and also the first bilateral trade agreement between India and China.

Nirupama Rao on the India-China Turning Point - The Wire China

"Given the fact that India and China are two of the biggest countries in Asia, questions of peace and security, and war and conflict between these two countries should be important, not only for the region, but for the rest of the world."

With the World on Edge, So Much Is at Stake

"I no longer guess a future. Though I know a story about maps, for you." And do not know how we end nor where. ∼ Michael Ondaatje The coronavirus pandemic that every part of the world is now the victim of comes at a period in global history when the post-Cold War world order, dominated by the United States, was already being shaken at the foundations.

Opinion | How India and Pakistan can step back from the brink of war

March 11 at 11:44 AM Nirupama Rao, a former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to the United States and China, is a global fellow at the Wilson Center and councilor at the World Refugee Council.

Bringing Out the China

BIG SISTER, LITTLE SISTER, RED SISTER Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China by Jung Chang This latest work by Chinese-born British writer Jung Chang is described as the story of "Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China", and so it is.

What the Rajapaksas' return means for India | Guest Column

Illustration by Tanmoy Chakraborty The Rajapaksa clan has dominated Sri Lankan politics for a decade-and-a-half now, and the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa to the country's presidency restates that reality. The Rajapaksas are people's politicians-they speak the tongue of the Sinhala street. Their capacity to outmanoeuvre opponents is well-known.

Paradise lost or regained? Kashmir must be drawn away from the precipice, with humane and...

The special status accorded to Jammu & Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution has been removed with the presidential notification of 5 August 2019. This is a bold move by the government reflecting strong political will. The Constitution of India will, from now on, fully apply to Jammu & Kashmir, and any special exceptions previously provided to the latter, are ended.

Evolving Global Equations and our Foreign Policy

I discuss the foreign policy of the Modi Government

https://www.nirupamamenonrao.net/uploads/4/2/6/7/42673355/a_mysore_pioneer.pdf

Talking South Asia: Can Identity Be Crafted Through the Medium of Music?

This is the transcript of a conversation between Pakistani singer and writer Ali Seth and Nirupama Menon Rao, former Indian foreign secretary. It was jointly hosted by the Bangalore International Centre and the South Asian Symphony Foundation in Bangalore on May 17.

ThePrintIndia on Twitter

'Does China look at any country as its equal? Feeling in China is that India must be contained', ex-Foreign Secretary & envoy to China Nirupama Rao @NMenonRao tells ThePrint's National Affairs Editor Jyoti Malhotra @jomalhotra #ThePrintUninterrupted https://t.co/qhK9VAv8uA

Doklam to Galwan: Have Modi-Xi informal summits been more about optics than border peace?

The standoff between Indian and Chinese militaries continues at Ladakh. India is deploying troops at multiple locations to mirror Chinese deployment. In October 2019, PM Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had held an informal summit in Tamil Nadu's Mamallapuram, after meeting in Wuhan the previous year in the wake of the 2017 Doklam standoff.

Nirupama Rao on how India should deal with an insecure China

Nirupama Rao has served in key positions under two different regimes. She was the foreign office spokesperson, the first woman to hold the post, during Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's time and she was in the centre of diplomatic frenzy that preceded and followed the failed Agra talks between Vajpayee and Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf in July 2001.

With the World on Edge, So Much Is at Stake

"I no longer guess a future. Though I know a story about maps, for you." And do not know how we end nor where. ∼ Michael Ondaatje The coronavirus pandemic that every part of the world is now the victim of comes at a period in global history when the post-Cold War world order, dominated by the United States, was already being shaken at the foundations.

Unlike Donald Trump's US and Mexico, we can't build a wall between India and Pakistan

At the best of times, the relations between India and Pakistan have been shaky, unstable and abnormal. This week, they were rendered even more weak. The massacre at Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on 14 February where over 40 personnel of the CRPF were murdered by a brain-washed, radicalised, young Kashmiri suicide-bomber became the trigger for the current sequence of events.

The neighbour's concern

"I wouldn't recognise the Balochistan problem if it hit me in the face." These were words spoken by Henry Kissinger during a mission to Pakistan on behalf of the Kennedy Administration in 1962.

Asia's long Islamic history offers strategy for fighting intolerance today

In discussions of the idea of Asia, there is usually little focus on Islam and its Asianness. Islam's arena of growth and evolution was Asia - the Asia of the Indian subcontinent, of Central Asia and the Straits of Malacca.

Have the women spoken?

Women's voices are barely heard in the making of foreign policy

It's time to be a good neighbour

It has been a difficult six months for the Nepali people. This week, they faced another humanitarian crisis because the flow of fuel and supplies from India stopped. Newspapers reported that hospitals and clinics ran out of supplies, restaurants and businesses closed, neighbours scrambled for firewood to cook and stay warm, and transportation shut down.

Used by terror?

Are we, the people of India, being used by terror? One has only to recall the infamous episode involving one of our TV channels during 26/11, in which airtime was provided to a terrorist with a fake Kashmiri accent to rail against the Indian state and justify acts of terror, even as he dodged questions from the anchor of the show.

Driven by neither hawks nor doves

The >terrorist blitz-from-the-ground on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot has brought home to us the fact that there is no brave new world in cross-border relations with Pakistan. Time after time, the same dissonances come back to haunt us.

India and China Must Move From Fragmented Geography to Himalayan Consensus

The idea of a shared space is the best way to respect our histories, our traditions of peaceful engagement, the cultural geographies we inhabit - all with blurred and indistinct boundaries and interrelated contexts of meaning.

A Himalayan balancing act

The great Himalayan Divide between India and China was in evidence last week following the > Chinese refusal to support India's case for entry into the > Nuclear Suppliers Group . While non-entry into the Group is not the end of the world, for India lives to fight another day, of concern is what the Chinese stance implies for the bilateral relationship between the two Asian giants.

The Pursuit of National Goals Needs Strategic Communication, Not Chaos and Noise

In the aftermath of Uri and the surgical strikes, atavistic calls for revenge blurred the focus on terrorism as the enemy of peace and development, as well as efforts to seek a settlement of outstanding issues with Pakistan through dialogue.

Tuning the Voice of India: How to Better Deploy Soft Power

Bureaucracy, particularly in our part of the world is not easily attuned topublic communication and its demands. "Less is more", "need to know basis", "information is power" are all zealously embedded truisms that are imbibed and intoned with great faith and conviction. When we do communicate, dexterity is a casualty.

A season to repair relations

The Chinese Ambassador to India, Luo Zhaohui, recently put forward some suggestions for improvement of bilateral ties between China and India. The suggestions are timely since relations between the two Asian giants have looked tired and worn in recent months. The voices from the gallery have been worrisome.

Turning India into a land only for Hindus goes against our nation, writes ex-FS Nirupama Rao -...

I am a Hindu by birth and by enduring faith.

Promises in the Rose Garden

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's much anticipated visit to Washington has come and gone. The chemistry was positive, and the physics (that is, the structural content and equilibrium) and the geometry (the angles and alignments along which the visit was pitched) well-calibrated. Mr. Modi's fifth visit to the U.S.

A Tangled Web in the Himalayas

It is said of Bhutan that it walks between giants. Its geo-strategic situation makes it a hugely important country, however. Sandwiched between India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, it has succeeded admirably in preserving its national identity, its rich cultural and spiritual heritage, and in advancing the development of its people.

Crowdsourcing Foreign Policy: Engaging in the Virtual Public Square

Four decades ago, I was inducted into the world of diplomacy. That era now seems light years away in many respects. It would have been impossible to imagine then that in the second decade of the 21st century we would think it perfectly normal to apply the concept of crowdsourcing and the virtual public square to the working of foreign policy.

Diplomacy in the Age of Social Media

Diplomacy is a fine art, heir to centuries of epochal deal making, system building, peacemaking and conflict avoidance and resolution - it is, in many ways, a profession for the ages. In the minds of men and women at large, however, it is also seen as a profession conducted in rarefied environs, in dizzying ivory-towered heights, away from the hurly-burly of earthling life.

What India can learn from Asean in dealing with China

The summit between two nations that together represent 40 per cent of the world's population could be an important step towards reducing tensions along the 'spine of Asia'.

India Pakistan relations: Charting a course without reliable maps

Emotional handshakes seem to vaporize in the atavism of distrust that constantly reasserts itself. Seven decades after partition, the landscape of India-Pakistan relations remains a wasteland. We have eaten a lot of bitterness. The interdependence stemming from shared history, the timber of our humanity, culture and language has eluded us.

Feminist Voices Could Change the Nature of International Diplomacy

"I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider." These words from Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand command attention. We need more female representation in various fields. Gender equality should define the grammar of daily existence. "Feminism" was the most looked up word in the Merriam-Webster dictionary last year.

When India and China meet

The path of India-China relations is strewn with the ghosts of summits past. The leaders of the two countries have met, expressed the loftiest of sentiments, gone their separate ways. No doubt, summits are good, nobody has a quarrel with them, the media at least loves them.

Unlike Donald Trump's US and Mexico, we can't build a wall between India and Pakistan

At the best of times, the relations between India and Pakistan have been shaky, unstable and abnormal. This week, they were rendered even more weak. The massacre at Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on 14 February where over 40 personnel of the CRPF were murdered by a brain-washed, radicalised, young Kashmiri suicide-bomber became the trigger for the current sequence of events.

Full text: 'We need to hear voices of Gandhi, Martin Luther King to negotiate darkness of conflict'

Former Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Menon Rao delivered a talk about the relevance of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr in today's world at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, United States, on January 15.

'A thousand-year relationship': Ambassador Nirupama Rao traces the ties between India and China

I belong to a generation of Indians born after Independence whose childhood was spent in the Nehru years. Prime Minister Nehru as I remember him was an inspirational figure, Chacha Nehru to us children, red rose in his buttonhole, a Bharat Bhushan, a leader in whose hands we, young children at that time, felt we were well protected.

The Ageless Life: There is no use-by date to Mahatma Gandhi's eternal legacy

"I aim to live to the age of 125," Mahatma Gandhi once said. An assassin's bullet snatched him away before that milestone was reached but in many ways, for the hope, the courage, the sense of fairness and justice he infused in the world around him, he lives on, as the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz said, in an "ageless life".

A diplomat's advice to young Indians: Strive to respect alternative points of view

In her speech at the convocation of Ashoka University in Sonepat, Haryana, on Friday, former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao described her idea of a university - not just a place that hands out degrees and qualifications but one that helps shape an individual.

A public philosophy of non-violence, a culture of peace - that's the diplomacy the world needs today

For almost all of my adult life, I have practised a profession that is diplomacy - that concerns the paths of peace rather than war. But diplomacy has also come to acquire other meanings - it covers strategy, geopolitics, competition and rivalry, maintenance of status quo, providing a velvet glove to narrow nationalism, and bypassing the common ground of mutual accommodation and mutual benefit.

How an Irish poet's epic poem on Kashmir captivated the West, spawning operas, musicals and grandeur

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,Before you agonise them in farewell?Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,Where are you now? Where are you now?

China May Be an Adversary, But Making It an Enemy Will Not Serve India

Canadian academic and politician Michael Ignatieff once remarked that an "adversary is someone you want to defeat. An enemy is someone you have to destroy." With adversaries, continues Ignatieff, "compromise is honourable. Today's adversary could be tomorrow's ally. With enemies, on the other hand, compromise is appeasement." Is China our enemy or adversary?

Geopolitics in the Indo-Pacific Calls for Flexible Geometry, Not Fixed Attachments

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 1, Prime Minister Modi said that today we see the assertion of power over recourse to international norms. The aspiration for power is the distinguishing element of international politics, an undeniable fact of experience, as Morgenthau termed it.

“Challenges to Democracy in a Multicultural and Globalized World: a Woman’s Perspective”

Lecture delivered at the Benjamin Bailey College, Kottayam, Kerala, India

The Meeting of the East and West: A View from India (BIARI Keynote Lecture, Brown University, 2014)

"The Rise of the Female Diplomat" (Book Review)

Telling it on the Mountain: India and China, 1949-1962

"Woman who Lead: Pages from an Indian Story"

Sarah Kailath Memorial Lecture, University of California at Berkeley

Geo Civilizations: India and China in Tagore’s Century

Lecture at King's College, London

Nurturing Youth Leadership for World Peace

Salzburg Global Seminar Series : Remarks delivered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore

"A New Country" (on Sri Lanka)

Remarks at the release of the book by Padma Sundarji, India International Centre, New Delhi

"The Greatest Wealth of All"

Convocation Address at the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, India

"Anatomy of the Gandhi Enigma"

Review of "Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography" by Pramod Kapoor, Roli Books

"Maps of a Lost Land"

"Rise of the Female Diplomat"

"Lost Horizons: the Tangled History of Tibet"

The other side of the 1962 India-China war story

Bertil Lintner has a formidable reputation as a journalist who has extensively explored what Nari Rustomji called our enchanted frontiers-our northeastern borderlands. His observations of the region are informative and balanced. His latest book, titled China's India War, is partly a riposte to Neville Maxwell's infamous (for most Indians) India's China War, a work published in 1970.

"A Life in Diplomacy"

MY STORY

A tsunami diary

NINE A.M., December 26, 2004. In Bangalore, I receive the following message on my cellphone: "Sea intrusion in Batti. Massive damage reported. Unconfirmed." I read the message, interpreting it as yet another instance of water-logging in flood-prone Batticaloa. But this is not a one-off.

Asia-Pacific Security: New Definitions, Emerging Regionalism

Paper written in 1993, when Author was a CFIA (now Weatherhead Center for International Affairs) Fellow at Harvard University.