India hand Sasha bids adieu to his karma bhoomi

Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin, or Sasha, as he was known to most, served in India through most of the important events in both his own country and his adopted one.

January 27, 2017 12:30 am | Updated 06:16 pm IST - NEW DELHI:

Alexander Kadakin (1949-2017)

Alexander Kadakin (1949-2017)

Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin died on Thursday in Delhi, in the land he called in 2013 his Karma Bhoomi , (land of work), Gnyana Bhoomi   (land of learning) and Prem-Maitri Bhoomi (land of love and friendship).

As he said that to an audience in Delhi, Mr. Kadakin added with a guffaw, “It is also my Tapa Bhumi   (land of meditation), especially in the hot season here.” The play on the word taap (temperature) and tap   (meditation) wasn’t just about clever wordplay: for the Ambassador, who by then was already the longest serving diplomat in India, it was a show of how well he understood both the country, and Hindi.

Witness to history

Alexander Kadakin, or Sasha, as he was known to most, served in India through most of the important events in both his own country and his adopted one. He first came to India just ahead of the signing of the India-Soviet Friendship and Cooperation Treaty, that was seen as the bulwark for India going into the Bangladesh liberation war.

Speaking about his arrival, Mr. Kadakin said, “It was a memorable event and I remember the exact date when I first landed in India. The rainy August 9, 1971, when Andrey Gromyko and Swaran Singh signed the historic Soviet-Indian Treaty. Was it an omen? I thought it was a blessing. And never I regretted in the next 42 years that my destiny would closely intertwine with this country. If I had another chance, would I choose the same fate? The answer is positive. It was kismet (fate).”

He was also in India as Deputy Chief of Mission when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, and became the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to India in 1999, an assignment he held for many years over two postings.

Enviously at home

Unlike his successor Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who was a KGB intelligence officer, Mr Kadakin was a career diplomat. But his network in India extended well beyond the polite diplomatic and MEA circles, through the entire political spectrum. Diplomats from other countries were frequently envious of the easy entry Sasha had to all political parties and government offices.

Over the years, Mr. Kadakin was witness to India’s move to pull free of its Moscow focus on defence ties, and move closer to Washington. In interviews, Mr. Kadakin would speak dismissively of the shift, often reminding journalists, who spoke of the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal, that till date the only working nuclear power reactors in India were those the Russians had built.

In time, Moscow also shifted its stance, and its new closeness to Beijing has come coupled with an openness to ties with Pakistan and a decision to deal with the Taliban in order to face the perceived greater threat from ISIS.

Mr Kadakin’s loss, say close watchers of the Indiia-Russia relationship will make it harder to retain the old vision of bilateral ties that saw the two countries as each other’s first priority.

“Ambassador Kadakin was the rock defending the relationship with India at the Kremlin. He was senior, he was the Ambassador as well as a former roommate of [Foreign Minister] Sergei Lavrov, and always held sway over the India policy,” explains Nandan Unnikrishnan of think tank ORF.

Fiercely defensive of Russia, but also of India, Mr. Kadakin was a rare diplomat who would see issues from both prisms. In the past few years, this became a tougher proposition, and even though he came out strongly to support Indian action after the Uri attacks in September 2016, he was hard-pressed to explain Russian military exercises with Pakistan in the weeks after.

When he was asked why Russia was now selling helicopters to Pakistan, Mr. Kadakin famously quipped, “If India is so upset, why doesn’t India buy them?”

As Ambassador in Delhi, Mr. Kadakin also made his mark with his warm and boisterous personality, and his grand style for entertaining. Several times a year, but most notably for Christmas, he would open up the imposing Soviet era Russian Embassy building for a fancy-dress ball. It wasn’t surprising to find the Ambassador dressed as an Indian soldier or wearing a cape with a mask like Zorro, as he welcomed guests to the ball, always encouraging them to see life as a “glass half-full; half-full of Russian vodka,that is.”

(With Kallol Bhattacherjee)

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