THE JOB profile of the Union home minister has never included the word “diplomacyâ€. Palaniappan Chidambaram knows it better than any of his predecessors, including that old hawk Lal Kishen Advani. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to send Chidambaram to Pakistan to do some plain speaking to his counterpart, Rehman Malik, the idea was to convey the message that henceforth, at least as far as Indo-Pak ties were concerned, domestic politics would dictate diplomacy. After the fiasco
