Quest for Shivaji s Sword

Quest for Shivaji's Sword G P D THIS country seems to have found a right foreign policy issue at last. Antulay will first go to Mecca and after obtaining the blessings there he will fly to London on his sacred mission of acquiring Shivaji's sword. For some time now Indian foreign policy has been groping for an issue. It could do precious little in the Iraq-Iran crisis. Akashvani tried to feature a few discussions in Hindi and English in which our clever analysts tried to examine what role the non- aligned states could play in the West Asian crisis. While our articulate champions of an Indian role everywhere were struggling to attract world attention to a role for the non- aligned and particularly for India, the war reached something of a stalemate. There is precious little that we could have done anyway. Our professional commentators who take themselves too seriously normally have little use for issues and problems on which, as leading non-aligned experts, they cannot express their profound and considered opinions. However, over the last few months these clever foreign affairs professionals have discovered that they have precious little to say on international issues and what they have to say matters less and less. Partly this is so because in terms of ideas they have reached a dead-endPartly it is also due to the fact that Indira Gandhi and her government are taking strange positions on problems relating to the interests of this country.