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Boris Johnson: A friend in Britain’s foreign office

Foreign correspondents assigned to India falling in love with beautiful Indian women is not an uncommon occurrence.

Boris Johnson: A friend in Britain’s foreign office

A May 2015 photo of London Mayor Boris Johnson and his wife Marina on a voting day in London. Reuters



Ashis Ray in London

Foreign correspondents assigned to India falling in love with beautiful Indian women is not an uncommon occurrence. One such instance was of Charles Wheeler, later knighted, of the BBC being swept off his feet by an irresistible Dip Singh, niece of the delightfully unsparing writer Khushwant Singh. The union has led to Britain’s current foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, being an in-law of India.

Joining BBC in 1947, Charles Wheeler was posted to South Asia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Among the stories he covered was the Dalai Lama’s daring escape from Tibet to India in 1959. A brilliant broadcaster, he passed away in 2008. The Indian Journalists’ Association in Europe posthumously conferred a lifetime achievement award on Wheeler in 2012. His two daughters, Marina, a barrister, and Shirin, a BBC correspondent in Brussels, received the honour. This week, the relationship was further consolidated with Marina being accompanied by her husband Boris Johnson to a dinner to celebrate IJA’s 70th anniversary — a commemoration set rolling in February by the Indian Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley.

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On May 29, 1947, a group of farsighted Indian foreign correspondents in London established IJA. Sir Harold Wilson, twice elected a Labour Party prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s, once wrote to it, stating: “I must record the great debt both India and Britain owe to your Association, which does so much to enable our people to understand each other, and by so understanding, come even closer together.”

Johnson’s colourful criticism of foreign leaders haunted his early days at the foreign office. But he remains among Conservatives a likeable character the city of London loves to describe as a “heavy hitter”. A robust political campaigner, he was twice elected London’s mayor —the biggest direct election in Europe for an individual after the French presidential poll. For years publicly enigmatic on Brexit, he finally took the plunge to tilt the scales in its favour. Having won the 2016 referendum, though, he came a cropper in a bid for the Conservative party’s leadership. He was, however, saved from potential wilderness by the successful candidate, Theresa May, who unexpectedly handed him the plum post of foreign secretary.

He arrived at the IJA function retaining his trademark, ruffled blond hair. In contrast, Marina, prim and proper, was attired in a gorgeous salwar-kameez — stitched from one of her mother’s saris she confided to a correspondent.

The buzz among 150 attendees was: what will he say in his speech? In a three-hour tour-de-force at the dinner table, he regaled guests sitting beside him with his inherent, no-holds-barred humour. He also noticeably spoke with warmth about his Indian relatives and with wisdom about India.

The British foreign office is a laboratory of diplomatic communication; and the wordsmith in Johnson appears to have fallen in line with such speak. There was an unmistakable message for media pressured by money and muscle power. He advocated “a free, independent and intrepid media”. “Tell truth to power,” Johnson roared, “let your sunlight disinfect the darkest places in our countries and across the world.” It was just the thing a newsman believing in liberty wanted to hear.

He did not spare his hero of Oxford days and about whom he’s written a biography, Britain’s wartime prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. “When he persistently and balefully prophesied disaster for Indian Independence or swaraj, he was more spectacularly and utterly wrong than he had ever been before,” he admitted, thereby pressing the right button for Indian patriots.

To the Indian establishment, he said: “70 years after Indian Independence, it’s an astonishing community of values between our two countries. We are shoulder to shoulder with India in tackling the threat of extremist terrorism.” Music to India’s ears.

He stressed on the importance of a future free trade deal, lacing jest with seriousness. “It would be a fine thing if the 150 per cent tariff on Scotch whisky could be reduced, so that the vast number of Indian Scotch whisky drinkers in India, including members of my family, can enjoy the king of whiskies.” He charmingly asked: “Isn’t that a humane thing?”  

About the nuclear rattling by North Korea, Johnson declared: “We will work with our friends in India I hope to persuade our friends in China. It is in the Chinese government’s hands to exercise that economic pressure on Kim Jong-un to achieve the diplomatic resolution that we need.” This in a climate of India’s standoff with China was Ravi Shankar on the sitar for South Block.

There’s a tendency in India’s Ministry of External Affairs to undervalue Britain. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council alone, it is more than important. India undoubtedly has a friend in Johnson at the foreign office. It now needs an ally at Downing Street to realise former prime minister David Cameron’s dream of a “special relationship”. 

(The writer is president of Indian Journalists’ Association in Europe)

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