India’s Foreign Office and its diplomats are seldom found conducting their relations with other countries and communities with diplomacy. If their overall conduct is evaluated on the basis of their ties and interaction with some countries and fraternities in the neigbourhood, it will come to be known that Indian government and mandarins of its diplomatic corps, at times, treat others in such categories as their satellites which means treating with arrogance. A recent example of this self-important behavior of Indian diplomats has come to the fore with the refusal of Indian Deputy High Commissioner (DHC) to issue visas to 3,000 Pakistani Bohras who want to participate in their annual congregation being held in India next month. According to authentic details available with The News, two representatives of Pakistan’s Bohra community, based in Karachi, namely Ali Raza Mustansar Poonewala and Ali Akber Walika, held a meeting with Jitender Pal Singh, Indian Deputy High Commissioner, some time back, in the DHC office. After facing certain difficulties, the Bohra community’s representatives approached the Indian DHC to seek visa facilitation. The DHC gave a curt reply, expressing his inability to accommodate in the matter of the requested visa facilitation, simultaneously advising the Bohras to approach Indian political leadership for issuance of Indian visas. It is pertinent to mention that annual congregation of Bohra community will be held in India in December 2017 in which around three thousand Pakistani Bohras would participate in the event, as they do regularly but in sheer disregard for the diplomatic decency and norms of goodwill, the Indian High Commission is so far reluctant to issue visas to members of Bohra community, directing the latter (Bohras) to approach the Indian political leadership for resolution of visas’ issue.
