Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 7
Foreign dignitaries from all over the world went through the motions of formalised tributes to former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj but the most poignant and heart-felt condolences came from the neighbourhood where she touched many lives with her proactive approach on micro-blogging media platforms or during her many visits in the last two decades of her political career.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai referred to her as “behenji” (sister) in his condolence message while on the royal command of the King of Bhutan, a thousand butter lamps were lit at Bhutan’s elite castle-monastery today morning in her memory. The King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck joined the monks in performing the special prayers.
At the hugely attended funeral that had the mandatory presence of foreign diplomats posted in the capital, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama was spotted with High Commissioner Austin Fernando. Former PM of Bhutan Tshering Tobgay was also spotted at the funeral.
Many Pakistanis as well as Indians recalled her impromptu reach out to those in urgent need for the hard-to-get Indian visas in Islamabad to avail of medical treatment here. Among the beneficiaries was one Kashif Chacha whose career on Twitter was restricted to just three tweets addressed to Sushma Swaraj in 2017.
Kashif had requested her on Twitter to grant a medical visa to get his infant son Abdullah evaluated in India after a liver transplant. “The treatment of your child must not suffer for want of medicine. I have asked the Indian High Commission to issue a medical visa,” she responded.
A prominent proponent of Kashmir being India’s atoot ang (indivisible part), she did not allow ideological disagreements to impair her humanitarian instincts. A Kashmiri student, then in Philippines and whose Facebook profile said he was from “India-occupied Kashmir,” promptly got his damaged passport replaced to enable him return home due to deteriorating health. But not before she administered a gentle tongue lashing: “If you are from J&K state, we will definitely help you. But your profile says you are from ‘Indian-occupied Kashmir’. There is no place like that,” she told him.
Saner elements from both sides had then hailed her healing touch to an increasingly fraught relationship. And they again stood up to recount her humanitarian instincts despite a
further nosedive in the India-Pakistan relations.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2GQwGbl
via Today’s News Headlines
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