The earlier Chinaman

When Prime Minister Modi hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Sabarmati riverfront, with a studied silence on the PLA's intrusion in Ladakh, one couldn't but miss late Prof ML Sondhi.

An upright patriot and an IFS officer, he resigned in the '60s to join politics. Our Chinese debacle had a profound impact on him. He was a compelling orator and the Tibet issue was his passion.

Prof ML Sondhi

My father often recalls how the entire babudom in the vicinity of boat-club and beyond, would often rush to the Rajpath lawns, sacrificing their lunch-hour, to listen to him. He entered Lok Sabha from the prestigious New Delhi constituency on the Jana Sangh ticket.

Prof Sondhi was, arguably, the first politician who ran his electoral campaign on a robust critique of Nehru's foreign policy, even in his street corner meetings. He fashioned the Jana Sangh's (BJP's forerunner) foreign policy that gave precedence to espousal of national interest over Nehru's woolly-headed moral grandstanding.

For decades, he taught at the School of International Studies at JNU and then controversially was made chairman of the Indian Council for Social Science Research in the NDA government.

I vividly remember my last meeting with him, over a decade ago, at his Amrita Shergill Marg residence, barely months before his death.

It was then that I came to know that he had named his two sons, Vivekananda and Shivaji. Even in that old age and frail health, the man was consumed by his earnest concerns related to neglected issues in the then NDA's foreign policy. This government must find a way to remember doyens like him. That is one sure way of staying anchored in our imperatives.