Throughout his career as a diplomat both before and after retirement from government, Satinder K. Lambah (“Sati” to most), who passed away on Thursday in New Delhi at the age of 81, carried a legacy of special relationships with each country he served in. However, it was his engagement with Pakistan that lasted the longest and saw the biggest breakthroughs, when he was Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s special envoy (2005-2014).
In a message, Mr. Singh called Mr. Lambah “one of the most outstanding members of the Indian Foreign service,” who had worked with “utmost devotion to normalise India-Pakistan relations.”
“Grieved at the passing away of Ambassador Sati Lambah. He was one of our most distinguished diplomats and a real mentor to the generations that came after him,” External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar wrote on twitter.
Work on 4-Step Formula
Mr. Lambah was born in Peshawar in 1941, and like his wife Nina, who hailed from Lahore, held links to his birthplace dear. During his time in the Indian Foreign Service, Mr. Lambah had served as India’s Deputy High Commissioner (1978-81) and High Commissioner (1992-95) to Pakistan as well as the Joint Secretary (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran). Those years, and the friendships he made across the border served as the base for his work on the India-Pakistan back channel for Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian PM Manmohan Singh, which worked on a draft of the “Four Step Formula” that could have led to a resolution on Jammu and Kashmir.
While the draft never came to fruition, especially after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks and Pakistan’s refusal to bring the perpetrators to justice, that derailed the process, many other initiatives between India and Pakistan: the trans-Kashmir LoC bus, trade, liberalisation of visas, holding of cricket matches and other exchanges (2005-2008) marked the most successful period in ties between the two countries in recent decades.
In his earlier years in the service, Mr. Lambah was part of the team that opened India’s Embassy in Dhaka after Bangladesh’s liberation. As Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s special envoy on Afghanistan (2001-2002), he flew aboard the first Indian Airforce plane into Kabul along with then Charge d’Affaires Gautam Mukhopadhaya to reopen the Indian mission in November 2001 after Taliban rule had ended.
“The quickness and agility with which we reopened our embassy in Kabul and responded to requests for support from the Northern Alliance government that was still to be put in place was really due to Mr. Lambah’s sharp political instincts,” Mr. Mukhopadhaya said. Prior to his retirement in 2001, Mr. Lambah had served as India’s Ambassador to Russia (1998-2001), turning around a period of some post-Soviet era strain in the India-Russia relationship with the first “Strategic Partnership” that was signed with Russian President Putin in 2000. “What is considered strategic in the fullest sense of the term today in our relations with Russia can be related to key decisions, whose architect was Ambassador Lambah,” said D.B. Venkatesh Verma, former Indian Ambassador to Moscow.
Mr. Lambah was considered a great raconteur with an impeccable memory by those who knew him, but was also very discreet about his talks with his Pakistani interlocutors, as was evidenced by his long tenure as the special envoy, which included many furtive visits to Pakistan, as well as secret meetings in other capitals of the world. Eventually he only revealed the extent to which Kashmir talks had progressed publicly at the very end of his tenure, at a speech at Kashmir University in May 2014. Subsequently in his writings, public appearances and interviews, he made it clear that despite the present standstill in ties, he was a firm believer in the power of dialogue.
“I am amongst the many who personally suffered as a result of Partition. We lost our homes, possessions and had to rebuild our lives in independent India where we came without an address. But I still firmly believe that with a neighbour, particularly when there is an unfriendly relationship, you have to have a via media to exist. Otherwise, we both hurt ourselves,” he told The Hindu in an interview last year.
Mr. Lambah’s own memoirs, which he was able to complete in the past few months even as his illness grew more serious after he contracted Covid, will be published later this year.
