Ambassador Eric Gonsalves

128 Pages·2013·1.94 MB·English

Oral History Record of
Ambassador Eric Gonsalves
Interview conducted by Ambassador Kishan S. Rana
in October 2010
Oral History Record of Ambassador Eric Gonsalves: Conducted by
Ambassador Kishan S. Rana in October, 2010.
Copyright© Indian Council of World Affairs, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be cited, reproduced, stored
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with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or
policy of the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Name : Ambassador Eric Gonsalves
Date of Birth : 9th May, 1928
Education : B.Sc. (Chemistry Hons.), Madras University
Joined IFS : 24th May, 1950
Languages : Spanish (compulsory), French, German (optional)
Main appointments:
Oct. 1952 to Sept. 1953 Private Secretary to MEA
Secretary General
Sept 1953 to Jan 1955 Second Secretary, NNRC, Korea
March 1954 to Aug. 1955 Vice Consul, Consulate General, New York
Aug. 1955 to Aug. 1958 Second Secretary and First Secretary,
High Commission, London
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Oct. 1958 to Dec. 1961 Deputy Secretary (Establishment), MEA
Feb.1962 to Dec. 1964 First Secretary, Indian Embassy, Rangoon
Jan 1965 to March 1968 Counsellor (Establishment),
High Commission, London
June 1968 to Jan.1972 Director (Administration),
Joint Secretary (South), MEA
March 1972 to June 1975 Minister(Political), Indian Embassy,
Washington DC
July 1975 to June 1978 Ambassador of India, Tokyo
June 1978 to July 1979 Additional Secretary (Asia), MEA
June 1979 to July 1982 Secretary (East), MEA
Aug. 1982 to May 1986 Ambassador of India to Belgium and to the
EEC and Luxembourg
After retirement he had served as Director of India International Centre,
Delhi from 1986-91, as Director of Asian Relations Commemorative
Conference, 1987. He was also a Member of International Observer Group,
Sri Lanka Elections 1989-94 and Member in Board of Management MAHE
(now Manipal University) from 1994 to 2006. He was the President of the
Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, till April, 2008.
Currently, he is serving as the Member of Governing Body, Centre
for Policy Research, Delhi and is the Convenor Indian Delegation BCIM
(Bangladesh China India Myanmar) Forum.
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CONTENTS

Page
Early Life of the Ambassador 7
Korea and New York (1953-55) 18
London as First Secretary (1955-1958) 22
Deputy Secretary (Establishment) 28
at Ministry of External Affairs (1958-1961)
Burma (1962-1964) 32
London as Counsellor Administration (1965-1968) 43
Joint Secretary (South) 49
of Ministry of External Affairs (1968-1972)
Washington D.C. (1972-1975) 60
Tokyo (1975-1978) 72
The Secretary of Ministry of External Affairs (1978-1982) 86
Brussels (1982-1986) 121
Concluding Thoughts 124
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Early Life of the Ambassador
Interviewer: Thank you very much Ambassador Eric Gonsalves for
agreeing to this oral history interview. Can we begin with the earliest part
of your career i.e. your- recruitment, the early experiences of your training
and your very first assignments?
Amb. Eric Gonsalves: Recruitment was not very different from today.
There was a written examination followed by an interview. (After my
retirement I had been invited to serve on the UPSC Interview Board and I
found the procedure archaic and even more bureaucratic.) In my time the
eligible age was changed and we found out that we were eligible to give
the exam a few months before it was scheduled to take place. There was
no reason for us not to try as we would have two more chances for which
we could prepare better. So we took it rather lightly.
I had just graduated from an Honours course in Chemistry and two of us
from the same class decided to take up French and British History. The
gamble paid off as there were few candidates for French and we topped
the History class. From my college class of 14 that year, six of us made it
to the IAS. Some 30 years later, four of us served together as Secretaries
to the Government, and three of us lived as close neighbours on Pandara
Road.
When we went to seek guidance from our predecessors, we were warned
about the Interview Board and their sadistic desire to trip up young
aspirants. In fact, the only thing that the Chairman of the Interview Board
had asked me was why I had put the IFS as my first choice. Was it because
I wanted to have a good time abroad or was it because I was unwilling
to serve under corrupt provincial governments? I was not able to answer.
Discretion is undoubtedly the better part of valour.
Our training was still evolving then. I was part of the second batch recruited
after Independence. The IAS officers with whom we trained in what is
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now called the ‘Foundation Course’ were able to use what had been used
for the ICS. But for the IFS, the course had to be developed. In fact, books
on how to run Embassies and Foreign Offices are now being written more
than 60 years after we had started our careers. Those in charge felt we
needed a modicum of grounding in Indian studies. So, professors from
Delhi University were lined up to teach us the basics of geography, history
and Indian civilisation and culture.
It was nothing like the structured courses now available in the academies
and training institutes. After two months of this initiation we were sent off
to get the patina of a classic British University, as had been done in the
ICS. This meant spending an academic year in Cambridge or Oxford (in
my case Cambridge). We were not expected to do any specific academic
course or pass any exam. It was really about experiencing the world,
meeting a variety of people and exchanging different views.
I was very fortunate to get two excellent tutors at Cambridge – one an
economist and the other a historian – who sent me to a whole lot of tutorials,
classes and lectures. Students of my generation in India were interested in
almost everything. But the extra-curricular activities at Cambridge were
a revelation and a delight in broadening one’s vision and enabling one to
make and keep friends from across the spectrum.
During the Christmas vacation two of my friends invited me to their
home to spend Christmas and New Year with their families. This is when
everything was rationed. By the Easter vacation my tutor had got me
invitations to visit some of the new industrial plants. I did so by hitch
hiking across Britain as I could not afford the rail fare.
We were also given a brief course on how the Foreign Office was run.
The course was for about two months and new probationers from India,
Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were the guinea pigs. The British
did not dislike training, but they had a firm belief that you got most of it
on the job learning from your superiors. So we learnt little and anyhow it
was summer and there were so many other attractions in London that we
had only read about!
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