By Nora Boustany, Washington Post - September 6, 2000

Indian Ambassador Naresh Chandra graciously welcomed Foreign Minister Lalit Mansingh at a dinner last Thursday but was blunt about the hectic summer he has had because of warming U.S.-Indian relations, the two U.S. political conventions and the laborious preparations for the visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who is scheduled to arrive here next week.

"If part of the history of 1492 is that it was the year Christopher Columbus discovered America, the year 2000 will be remembered as the year America discovered India. After 22 years, your president came to visit. Let us say this is a new beginning, and it is a wonderful new beginning," Mansingh said, describing President Clinton's forays into Jaipur and the tigers and elephants he encountered in Rajasthan.

"This is definitely a good moment for India-U.S. relations but not one without repercussions. Scores of delegations and dignitaries have come to visit [from India] and at least 10 ministers have come to Washington in the months of July and August," Chandra said. "But [the foreign minister's] is one delegation that we welcome."

The ambassador singled out Mansingh as the person who ranked first out of several hundred thousand applicants when, as an aspiring diplomat, he took the Indian foreign service exam. "I think you see in this room people who do all the work while others get the credit," the ambassador joked in patting Mansingh's and his own team on the back after a sumptuous dinner of Indian fare.

In a postprandial conversation, Mansingh was guarded when asked whether India intended to solve the struggle over Kashmir, the Indian territory that is also claimed by Pakistan and is the site of a secessionist rebellion. "What do you mean by solve?" he asked. India will not agree to do anything "at the point of a gun," he said in reference to local insurgents backed by Pakistan and demands that Pakistan be included in negotiations over Kashmir's future.

The ambassador thanked Leon S. Fuerth, the foreign policy adviser to Vice President Gore, for squeezing in a lunch for the Indian prime minister's delegation with his boss on Sept. 15 despite heavy scheduling demands. "More is going on between the two countries than on the official level," said Fuerth in responding to toasts by the ambassador and the foreign minister.

Fuerth spoke of a recent meeting with three Indian Americans who were proud both of their ethnic heritage and their lives here. "The question of the hyphenated Americans is the future of the United States," he said. "There was not one moment at which they separated themselves from their heritage but not one scintilla of an attempt to separate themselves from America and what it has given them," he added, toasting "the common heritage of democracy" in India and the United States.