Column

Meanwhile in Delhi

In the heat of strategic analysis and liberal debate, we tend to forget the human connection. Then, along comes Nabila Al Bassam, glamourous art gallery owner from Saudi Arabia, and stirs a fading collective consciousness of long historical links and cultural associations between India and West Asia.

Al Bassam is Pune-born and Mumbai-educated. Her grandparents and parents ran a thriving trade between Saudi Arabia and India, a connection she’s also nurtured by importing Indian artisans for her handicrafts workshops.

She has fond memories of her student days in Cathedral School and was overjoyed at the thought of featuring in DNA in the hope that her Mumbaikar friends would read about her.

Al Bassam is in the capital these days as part of an 18-member delegation sent by the Saudi government on a PR exercise before King Abdullah’s state visit begins next week.

With her unveiled head and flourishing business, she’s hardly your typical Saudi woman. Yet, in many ways she is. As she freely admits, she’s got where she is today because of the men in her life. In the beginning, it was her father who educated her in India and then at the American University in Beirut. Later, it was her husband who supported her all the way through her many enterprises.

It’s a familiar story. Despite constitutional guarantees of equal opportunities, women in India by and large achieve only as much as the men in their lives allow them to. We were fortunate enough to have a Gandhi and a Nehru pushing women’s empowerment against all odds.

Now, women have taken up the battle themselves. Al Bassam says something similar is happening in Saudi Arabia. It’s a long haul but the winds of change seem to be blowing through the desert.

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The important thing is not to let prejudices crowd out the message. Obviously, Al Bassam and the six other career women who make up the female component of the Saudi delegation do not
reflect the reality of a society notorious for its gender biases.

At the same time, the fact is that they are here with their government’s blessings and ready for frank talk. It’s interesting that the Saudis have chosen to do an image-building blitz in India. Clearly, our opinion counts and cultural overlaps make it easier to bond.

Al Bassam, for instance, is not the only one with an India connection. Poetess Nimah Ismail Nawwab hails from Mecca, where, she says, rasmalai and laddoo are as common as dates.

With hundreds of Indian workers crowding Mecca, she feels quite at home here and her easy familiarity with things Indian helps to break the ice quickly.

For Nawwab, this trip to India, although limited to New Delhi, is an important milestone. For too long, she says, Saudi Arabia has been isolated from the world. It’s time to break out, she feels, and who better to help the Saudis to make the transition into the 21st century than India?

Governments will do what they have to but ultimately, it’s the people-to-people contacts, to use a cliché, that breaks down barriers. Perhaps it’s time to bury the history of anti-India OIC resolutions and see what the Saudis have to offer today.
Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net