Undiplomatic men of letters

Henry Kissinger's to-ing and fro-ing between Middle Eastern capitals in the early 70s, in a bid to get the Arabs and Israelis to stop fighting gave rise to the term 'shuttle diplomacy’.

We, in India, are now witness to a form of 'letter diplomacy' between Union home minister P Chidambaram and West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

It all began after Chidambaram sent the chief minister a 'strongly worded' letter about Communist party workers creating trouble in the state. In return, Bhattacharya objected to the use of a certain word to describe party cadres. Seeing the barbs and counter-barbs in newspapers, one might be forgiven for believing  that the two hail from different countries. Even India-Pakistan exchanges in these post-26/11 times seem tamer than this.

Yet, we all know that both Chidambaram and Bhattacharya are bound by politics to do what they do; the former has to pander to a certain Mamata Banerjee; the latter to his bosses in the CPM . Instead, our suggestion is that these two gentlemen, among the more urbane and civilised politicians today, should get together over a cup of tea and talk things out.

Of course, they would first need to decide whether the tea should be from the Nilgiris or Darjeeling.