Sergei Gor: His Master’s Voice

Apparently it was an ambush, the way the Ministry of External Affairs learnt of the naming of Sergei Gor as the new putative ambassador to India, a post lying vacant for over half a year. Dr Jaishankar’s throwaway reaction that he’d `read about it’ could be both sardonic and genuine. The minister must have read about it in Truth Social, the same way the rest of the world did and almost at the same time. After all, we learnt about the cessation of our brief hostilities with Pakistan from Trump. And only recently the minister was saying what a big problem it is for India that the American president conducts his diplomacy in public. Indeed, if the name of Sergei Gorokhovsky (that was the moniker Gor went about with for about half his life) and his curious designation had floated up through the usual channels, it was bound to have raised hackles in New Delhi. For Gor is to be a two-in-one appointment, Ambassador to India, as well as Special Envoy on South and Central Asian Affairs. That is a vast swathe of the world for someone whose connection to Central Asia is tenuous at best: Gor was apparently born in Tashkent. His connections to India, or indeed, South Asia, would be even more feeble, having busied himself in making himself useful to Donald Trump by way of his publishing copious amounts of Trumpthink. Gor’s collected thoughts on India wouldn’t even fill a thimble. The last time Washington pulled that designation, Special Envoy, on India, it was met with fierce resistance. Trump himself might have been tempted to exclaim, ‘Nasty!’ If he had been a South Block mandarin.

Be that as it may, at the ripe young age of 38, Gor still has a lot of teeth that need serious cutting in this part of the world. He is likely to bring a rare messianic zeal into his mission; ergo, New Delhi will have to brace for a much bumpier ride ahead as part of the hoi polloi, not as aspirant to the High Table at the United Nations. Gor works for a man who claimed he would solve Ukraine overnight. He works for a man who thinks he has successfully mediated between India and Pakistan. The tendency for meddling is only going to go up with flinty Gor positioned in New Delhi. We can only hope that he is not afflicted with a severe case of Delhi Belly, with all the travelling he will have to do—euphemistically and pejoratively otherwise referred to as shuttle diplomacy—between, let’s say, New Delhi and Islamabad, while getting his master’s task done. But, as they say, we are Vasudeva Kutumbakam. In other words, Welcome Brother Gor! There is a good book waiting here to be written and published.

V Sudarshan is the editor of The Free Press Journal