Maharajakrishna Rasgotra was a career diplomat who served India with great distinction for almost forty years (1949–1990), often working closely with Pandit Nehru, and later, Indira Gandhi. He was born in a humble (though aspirational) family and was, therefore, largely a self-made man. Any book written by him would be of interest. A Life in Diplomacy is specially so because it is the story of India and the world which the author saw— and tried to shape—in his long years in the world of diplomacy. (The book contains a few finely drawn vignettes from the author’s personal life—his early years, his poetry, his marriage, the tragic loss of a child, his spiritual awakening later in life . . . but, as is made clear by the author, the book is not an autobiography.)
I first met the author in May 1969, when he came to Washington to take virtual charge of the Indian embassy there as its Deputy Chief of Mission with the rank of ambassador. (I was First Secretary in the embassy at the time.) Rumour had it that the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, had pulled him out in a hurry from Morocco and sent him to Washington because Richard Nixon, who detested India and hated Indira Gandhi, had become President of America. She expected trouble and needed someone good, who also knew America, to handle the trouble. (Rasgotra had worked in Indian missions in Washington as well as New York in his younger days.)