Buddha smile and a frown - Calcutta Telegraph

Narendra Modi accompanied by the head priest during a visit to the Kinkaku-ji temple in Kyoto on Sunday. “I am Modi and you are Mori!” the Prime Minister told head priest Yasu Nagamori, 83, of the 14th century temple. Earlier in the day, at the Toji temple, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had started to explain the significance of the lotus but Modi interrupted him. “I know its significance. It is the symbol of my party,” he told Abe and both had a laugh. (PTI)

New Delhi, Aug. 31: Narendra Modi today used Buddhism as his metaphor to epitomise the centuries-old ties between India and Japan. But a different, 40-year-old Indian reference to “Buddha” is threatening to delay a nuclear pact the Prime Minister was keen to ink on his Tokyo trip.

Modi today visited two of Japanese Buddhism’s holiest shrines, the Toji Temple and the Kinkaku-ji Temple, in the imperial capital of Kyoto, as India’s foreign office repeatedly underscored the significance of Buddhism as a historical bond between the nations.

But persisting differences on the text of a nuclear deal India and Japan have been negotiating since 2010 mean Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are now unlikely to ink the agreement in Tokyo tomorrow, senior officials said.

Those differences are rooted in the compulsions of domestic politics in Japan, the only known victim of nuclear bombs, where India’s 1974 nuclear tests code-named “Operation Smiling Buddha” and the later tests in 1998 are still viewed as evidence New Delhi cannot be trusted.

Abe, who broke with practice to meet Modi in Kyoto — the Indian Prime Minister’s first destination on his five-day trip to Japan — spent the first half of Sunday with his guest. The two visited the Toji Temple, after which Abe returned to Tokyo, where the two Prime Ministers will hold formal bilateral talks tomorrow.

The talks between Modi and Abe, and the signing of agreements the nations are trying to finalise, have been scheduled for the evening tomorrow to allow Indian and Japanese negotiators as much time as is possible to seal complex agreements on defence and rare earth metals.

Modi will meet several Japanese cabinet ministers, and officials from the commerce ministry will separately hold talks with their counterparts in Tokyo, officials said.

But it is the nuclear agreement that Modi and his government were most keen to sign during the current visit. That, an official said, now appears “unlikely”.

“It’s unlikely now on this trip,” the official said. “There’s still some gap between us that we need to negotiate.”

When foreign minister Sushma Swaraj met Japanese foreign minister in Myanmar’s capital earlier this month, her most forceful message — according to both Japanese and Indian officials — was that the two nations expedite nuclear negotiations ahead of Modi’s Tokyo visit.

Now, India and Japan will refer to the nuclear negotiations in the joint statement the two Prime Ministers will issue Monday evening. According to one official, they may ink a minor agreement reinforcing the commitment of both nations to eventually sign the nuclear pact.

But Japan is unwilling to give up on its demand that the text of the nuclear agreement mention specifically Tokyo’s right to pull out of the pact if New Delhi conducts fresh tests.

The condition itself is not a source of friction: both countries know Tokyo will have no other option, even if the text of the pact does not mention a Japanese exit clause.

Japan has so far only inked nuclear deals with nations that are signatory to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). India has not accepted either.

For India, any specific reference in the text that points to a lack of trust in New Delhi’s stated commitment to non-proliferation — and its self-imposed moratorium on testing — is unacceptable.

A failure to wrap up the pact during Modi’s visit will not derail the agreement — diplomatic negotiations often take several years.

But the inability of the two nations to reach a consensus on the text of the pact will dent Modi’s stated objective of focusing on hard deliverables rather than mere symbolism of foreign visits.