Graduates of the schools of diplomacy are taught to find the right fit for success in the international arena. Yet Raja Tridiv Roy, the last raja of the Chakma tribe in former East Pakistan, is a self-taught diplomat.

He did not learn diplomatic skills in an academy; in all probability he acquired the knack of diplomacy during his first appearance at the historic United Nations session in 1972. He was sent to the United Nations' headquarters to lead the Pakistani delegation and defeat the resolution on Bangladesh's application for membership.

At the same time, President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman of Bangladesh dispatched Roy's mother to New York with a mandate that she should prevail on her son to forswear his loyalty, embarrass Pakistan and gain the new state admission into the UN.

It was a critical situation for Roy to first convince his own mother about the correctness of the Pakistani stand that it was not the right time for Bangladesh to aspire for UN membership because it remained India's client state since the Indians were still stationed there.

His mother's pleading notwithstanding, he was able to 'grasp the practicalities of diplomacy in a multilateral setting' and came out shining through the ordeal and completed the assignment as well as any trusted Pakistani diplomat would. In recognition of a job well done, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto greeted Roy on his return at Chaklala airport in Rawalpindi with a protocol fit for a head of state.

Roy may well have gained insight into international diplomacy as well as the prescience to look ahead during the heady days of politics in East Pakistan and after the 1970 general election. He was one of the two members (the other was the late Nurul Amin) elected to the Pakistan National Assembly. He did not join the winning Awami League that secured 167 out of 169 seats in the eastern wing, the victory that gave fillip to the demand for East Pakistan's separation from the central government.

In Pakistan Roy became the minister for tourism as well as minority affairs. With the return of a parliamentary form of government, he went abroad in the 1970s as an ambassador to Argentina Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay.
He has written an account of his ambassadorial assignment in his fourth and latest book South American Diaries which has recently been published by the National Book Foundation.

The book relies on entries made in a diary that Roy maintained during his career. It documents his engagements as Pakistan's representative in South America, a continent that receives very little attention by the Pakistan foreign office.

During his term the author might have used gentle persuasion in South American countries — where the US policy is hard and unbending — duly informing his hosts about the course of his country's foreign policy, one presumes, by employing interpreters.

Nevertheless, he would have had to reorient his arguments in Mexico, which has good relations with the US.

The author writes about a number of things he noted in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.

Apart from the political comments that ambassadors are required to send home, he describes the country's contours as well as its cultural leanings and the friendships he cultivated with presidents and dignitaries.

We get here a hint that he enjoyed immense popularity wherever he was assigned, and the knowledge that he rarely missed an important official function and thereby brought Pakistan to the world's notice. In addition, he used his foreign posting to keep in touch with the Chakma tribe of which his son was the new chief.

Reflective of Roy's sound educational background at Oxford, the book is a good read overall and
offers much useful insight for upcoming Pakistani diplomats as well as diplomats from foreign countries sent for training at the Pakistan Foreign Services Academy (PFSA).

This soft-spoken person is also the president of the Pakistan Buddhist Association and looks
after the welfare of about 10,000 Buddhists who live mostly in the Sindh province. He is responsible also for the upkeep of a Buddhist centre in the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad that has received universal recognition for the Festival of Lights celebration which marks the Lord Buddha's birth and death anniversary in May each year.

 
South American Diaries A Pakistani ambassador's journal 1981-1995
By Raja Tridiv Roy
National Book Foundation, Islamabad
409pp. Rs660