It all seemed par for the course on Monday morning when Abdul Basit, Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi, stated that he did not think India would object to his invitation to Kashmiri separatists for a dinner celebrating Pakistan’s Republic Day.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, along with six other separatist leaders, including Masarat Alam, whose recent release from detention had been the subject of a heated controversy, were among the invitees.

Alam begged off, citing ill-health, but the Indian external affairs ministry stuck to the script. "The Government of India prefers to speak for itself," rebuked its spokesperson, Syed Akbaruddin. "There should be no scope for misunderstanding or misrepresenting India's position on the role of the so-called Hurriyat... there are only two parties and there is no place for a third party in resolution of India-Pakistan issues."

Despite the rhetoric, all seemed to be well on the Indo-Pak diplomacy front when Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he had greeted his counterpart Nawaz Sharif for Pakistan’s National Day.

Not only that, none other than the country's second ranked diplomat, the minister of state for external affairs, former army chief General VK Singh, was deputed to represent the Indian government at the reception.

Come the evening, and there was the usual jingoistic bombast on certain television channels, with apoplectic hosts working themselves into a lather.


There were also those who welcomed the seeming diplomatic thaw.

Others pointed to the irony of the situation, recalling earlier posturing:

As the hashtag #PartyWithEnemy seemed to pick up, Singh seems to have decided to pitch in with a series of cryptic tweets of his own:





While most were left puzzled and intrigued by Singh’s tweets, they seem to have provided just the grist that the gossip mills needed, leading to speculation that he was “unhappy about representing the government at the Pakistan Day function after his followers on Twitter criticised him for attending the event.”

Singh, who has a history with such indiscreet tweeting and had once infamously tweeted “Presstitute” to describe certain news journalists, responded with yet another salvo before retreating for the night:

Meanwhile, it had become a free for all on Twitter, as people tried to make sense of what exactly was going on, with speculation, sarcasm and satire.















On Tuesday, as the day dawned, one would have thought that Singh would at least be a little chastened by the all-round roasting he had received the night before, but he seemed oblivious to it all, as he launched his morning operations with yet another Tweet:

Singh may have been alluding to something other than his own unforgettable coinage, "presstitute", but enquiring minds were left wondering.

Perhaps the last word is best reserved for a man whose own tweeting while in government had resulted in unintended consequences:

And the last words from the column:
There's an old line about diplomacy that says: "If he says yes, he means maybe; if he says maybe, he means no; if he says no, he's no diplomat." Gen VK Singh, whom I genuinely like as a person, is no diplomat.

If the Prime Minister is serious about his diplomatic opening to Pakistan, he needs to harness General Singh's considerable professional qualities for something more appropriately up his street - a job in which he can say "No". Give him the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or the bullet train project, and let his office in South Block be occupied by someone who understands the difference " between calling someone a liar and pointing out gently that he may have inadvertently been guilty of terminological inexactitude.