MODI'S MESSENGER

S Jaishankar as the voice of India's Hindu nationalist foreign policy

- ERAM AGHA

WHEN THE FOREIGN SECRETARY, Sujatha Singh, got a call from the external-affairs minister's office in January 2015, she knew something was up. Sushma Swaraj wanted to set up a meeting for 2 pm on 28 January but would not say what the meeting was about. This was unusual and enough to make Singh wary. When she went in, she tried to keep up appearances and began briefing the minister about the next day's plan. But, before long, Swaraj conveyed the disappointing news. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to replace her as foreign secretary, with Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. She would not serve a full two-year term, which was to end in six months.

When she described this sequence of events to the journalist Karan Thapar, Singh's voice was heavy with emotion. The news of her curtailment had made headlines-it was a shocking and rare development in the history of the Indian Foreign Service. The only other time a foreign secretary had been unceremoniously replaced was in 1987. AP Venkateswaran had a reputation for being blunt and not being a pliant bureaucrat; he was known, for instance, to have differences with various officials, including the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi-on sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force into Sri Lanka. In a televised interview, Gandhi finally dropped a bomb: "Soon you will be talking to a new foreign secretary." Venkateswaran resigned before he could be officially dismissed.