Eric Gonsalves was one of India’s first diplomats.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
At the peak of India’s preparation for the war of 1971, Indira Gandhi visited Washington DC for meeting U.S. President Richard Nixon. However, the meeting did not help in changing the Nixon administration’s orientation towards the Pakistan government that was carrying out atrocities against civilians in East Pakistan. Next month, Bangladesh was liberated but India-U.S. relation nosedived as the Nixon administration’s policy on Pakistan did not deliver expected results.
Indira Gandhi had a difficult task at hand as the U.S. was one of the major partners of India and ties had to be repaired. It was at this point that Eric Gonsalves, a mid-career Indian Foreign Service Officer of 1950 cadre was sent to the Indian Embassy in Washington DC as the Minister (Political) of the Embassy.
Gonsalves started a back channel talk with important emissaries of the U.S. in a coffee shop in Washington. One of the officials he met was Vernon A. Walters, the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. These back channel informal talks in those critical months of 1972-‘74 kept India-U.S. relation alive though zthe political warmth was not missing.
Born in May 1928, Gonsalves, 97, passed away on Sunday (March 22, 2026) in a hospital in Bengaluru.
Gonsalves joined the newly launched Indian Foreign Service through a competitive examination on May 24, 1950. He received probationary training till March 1953 and was sent as an attache to the Neutral National Repatriation Commission that was chaired by India and was tasked with overseeing repatriation of the PoWs of the Korean war.
Gonsalves next was posted as Vice Consul in New York from March 1954 to August 1955 at the height of the Cold War witch hunt marked by McCarthyism. As the Deputy Secretary of Establishment division of the MEA, Gonsalves during 1958-’61 drafted the Indian Foreign Service PLCA (Pay, Leave, and Compensatory Allowances) Rules of 1961 that remains in use even in the twenty-first century. The first edition of that PLCA book carried his signature, Gonsalves told his oral history interviewer Kishan S. Rana at the Indian Council of World Affairs.
Gonsalves had his brush with history during 1962-’64 when he was posted as a First Secretary of the Indian Embassy in Myanmar. This was the tense phase in Myanmar’s history when under the rule of General Ne Win, Myanmar (then Burma) undertook radical measures to fix economic problems and as part of that Burma began expelling Indians.
In an oral history documentation with the Indian Council of World Affairs, Gonsalves said that around 3,00,000 Indians were repatriated from Myanmar between 1962-’64 and he and his colleagues, junior officials at that time had to manage the crowd who came to deposit gold and precious items with the Embassy for safe keeping as they were worried of being robbed by the Myanmar authorities.
As the Secretary East of MEA from 1979 to 1982, Gonsalves brought his contacts into good effect when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wanted to revive relations with the U.S. to send a message to the Soviet Union that India did not appreciate the invasion of Afghanistan that had created a spill over security impact for India in Punjab and Kashmir.
Gonsalves retired in 1986 after serving as India’s Ambassador to Belgium, EEC and Luxembourg. He remained a regular visitor to the India International Centre in Delhi after retirement but had shifted to Bengaluru some years ago.
Published – March 25, 2026 04:39 am IST
