Of treading on toes!

Given the recent events, one can hardly resist the temptation to hark back to the age-old coarse art of ‘treading on toes’. As things develop on the canvas of recent history, this art is staging a comeback and that too with a vengeance! Who is treading on whose toes and with what results only time will tell. For the moment though it would be expedient to take time out and devote one’s undivided attention to the ‘art’ in question.

There was a time when the high and mighty of this blessed land took delight in this pastime. This was particularly true of those who delighted in dabbling in the art of ‘diplomacy’ or whatever it was known as in those days of somewhat loose habits. Of course, those good old times are no more. One lives and learns. There are several little lessons that come one’s way, if only one pays a bit of attention.

The perspicacious reader must surely have noticed that any sane individual spends half of his/her life in either avoiding treading on other persons’ toes or, alternatively, in saving his/her own toes from being trod on. The same can be said of nations and nation-states. So, when one talks of ‘persons’, the implications are wider!

Treading on toes, it must be stressed, is as old as history itself. Persons of all stations and diverse dispositions have over the ages lost their heads over it — and not only figuratively. In the individual sense, treading on toes is the bane of all societies. Most disputes, machinations and vendettas have their origins in an incident or incidents of treading on toes. Of course, it is important to fathom who does the treading and whose toes are being trod on, since one cannot afford to be non-discriminatory in such delicate matters. There is a pecking order!

Oriental societies such as ours are particularly sensitive. Treading on toes in our kind of societies becomes a matter of family (national) honour, in a manner of speaking. Our feudal lords (not to talk of lords not so feudal) have peculiar sensitivities about their toes being trod on by the small fry. Come to think of it, in this age of globalisation, deliberate treading on toes appears to have caught on like an epidemic. World history would not be what it is today, if only known personalities and nations had paid a bit more attention betimes, to what they were treading on. A little research into this subject could well sift this out as the single most significant cause of the outbreak of armed conflicts. Why go far; a cursory glance at the recent military adventures of the powers that be, and the chain of events they unleashed, should be enough to provide ample food for thought.

International diplomacy has a lot to do with how deft one is at avoiding treading on toes of the wrong kind. Successful diplomacy can aptly be defined as the ability to cross a minefield of sensitive toes and emerge on the other side without having trod on any. About our own diplomacy, the less said the better. If anything, we appear to specialise in is treading on toes; and the wrong ones at that. Add to that our well-known reluctance to protect our own toes from being trod on and you have the whole picture!

It would be too much to hope, perhaps, that our public figures would leave one another’s toes alone. Such habits die hard. Much can be accomplished, though, in the fields of diplomacy and international relations. Our statements in the domain of foreign affairs need to be honed in a fashion as not to give a handle to our critics to discover a chink in our armour. The tendency to shoot from the hip (that we have apparently borrowed from our friends, the Americans) will need to be shed in favour of a more circumspect approach towards sensitive issues. For the time being, the moot point is how to sidestep the Superpower juggernaut! Our diplomatic toes may be in for an excruciatingly painful experience in the not too distant a future!

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.