Did it deter the ‘king of fruit’ being a sweet diplomatic mediator?

It was somewhere in early July  1977, during a crucial election campaign that Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike received a crate of juicy Pakistani mangoes from General Zia Ul Haq who toppled Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and assigned himself the position of President and Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan. 

The mangoes were delivered to Rosemead Place from Islamabad via the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo. Then Ambassador Khalid Khaishgi who had received them through diplomatic courier had assigned his second secretary  Rehmat Ullah Khan to ensure that the premier received the mangoes-a gesture of good will from his new boss. He also attached a letter from Zia    Ul Haq to the crate of mangoes that came from the trees of the central Pakistani city of Multan in Punjab Province. A response from Mrs Bandaranaike was never expected. The next day however, the ambassador was stunned to receive the same crate of mangoes with a curt written message from Mrs. Bandaranaike:   “Your Excellency, Mr Ambassador, Pakistani mangoes are well known for their taste and fragrance. Thank you for sending me this crate of mangoes on behalf of President General Zia Ul Haq. However, I cannot accept a gift from a person whose hands have the blood of Pakistan’s elected Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on them. He was not just the leader of Pakistan but a great spokesman for the Third World. Please return this gift to the sender.” By then General Zia had sent Bhutto on trial on charges that drew the death penalty. 

Nevertheless the mangoes were never sent back to Islamabad but consumed by the staff of the Pakistan High Commission. However, Mrs Bandaranaike’s message was sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad for onward delivery to the President’s House in Rawalpindi. This was, besides being an unusual diplomatic response, a stinging rebuke to a military dictator who had turned down the three written appeals by Mrs. Bandaranaike to Zia Ul Haq to spare the life of Bhutto and  send him into exile. She had even offered to host Bhutto in exile in Colombo. 

The same summer Zia Ul Haq had sent mangoes to his counterparts in India, Bangladesh and Nepal. But, it is not known if those leaders responded in a manner to the fearless, principled gesture of Mrs. Bandaranaike.  

For decades, Pakistani leaders have been using the country’s declared ‘king of fruits’ – the mango – as a tool of diplomacy to sweeten relations and tape over any wrinkles in bilateral ties with its regional neighbours, especially SAARC states, said political analysts Adnan Rehmat in Islamabad. This practice  conducted on behalf of Pakistani presidents and prime ministers by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – has been documented since the mid-1970s.  Pakistan’s first elected Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the first to use the practice after being elected to office in 1972. The first crate of mangoes he sent was to Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This was barely a year after Pakistan broke into two with East Pakistan becoming an independent Bangladesh in 1971. Islamabad has always maintained that India played an active role in stoking independent sentiments in the politically volatile east wing of Pakistan, which ended  after a bloody war between India and Pakistan in 1971. The war ended with over 93,000 Pakistani soldiers becoming prisoners of war (POWs) of India and Ali Bhutto used mangoes to start a post-war dialogue with Indira Gandhi to secure the release of all the POWs as well as to get back a few border towns captured by India.

Bhutto was hanged by Zia in 1979 after a a kangaroo trial. Zia was reputed to hate every Bhutto practice and did not follow the civilian leader’s diplomatic practices, except one. This was sending mangoes to his counterparts in other countries, said Rehmat.  

History continued to repeat itself when another Pakistani military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, toppled another elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in 1999. Musharraf, who also appointed himself president like Zia, is also on record that he sent crates of mangoes to his Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sources in the  Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad confirmed that Rajapaksa loved the Multan mangoes and never returned any mangoes Musharraf sent him. [But the Colombo foreign office denied this claim and stated that no mangoes had been accepted from any country for many years].
A friendly neighbour with strong diplomatic relations since 1948 who helped Sri Lanka during a ruthless war does not need mangoes to send ambassadorial messages. 

But the story was different when Nawaz Sharif sent a fresh crate of Pakistani mangoes to President Maithri a couple of weeks ago. According to last week’s Sunday Times, the Presidential Secretariat had refused to accept them after customs and quarantine clearance. But the President’s Office said that the decision to return the mangoes was taken by the Foreign Ministry and that it had nothing to do with them. The Foreign Ministry said that the decision was purely based on ‘technical reasons’. The Pakistan High Commission in Colombo said that they too had no role in this episode as the mangoes reached the President’s Office direct from Islamabad.



What are the technical reasons that the Foreign Ministry  referred to? It was purely on agricultural grounds and had nothing to do with politics, said one senior official at the foreign office. “It is something beyond quarantine. We do not have systems like Singapore to counter insects that could come along with such fruits,,” said agriculture officials. “Thus, the only solution was to return them”. But were they really returned to Islamabad? According to a media report the mangoes were consumed by Customs officials. Then what about the insects the authorities were worried about? And how come President Rajapaksa enjoyed Pakistani mangoes despite the insect fiasco? 

According to Foreign Ministry sources, the decision [to send mangoes] was not confined to Pakistan. Even India sent such a mango ‘gift’ recently and the ministry had to apply the same policy. “We were convinced that both countries understood our position”, a ministry official said. “All these gifts never reached their point of origin but were consumed here”, declared Customs. 

“Although Sri Lanka continues not to accept, they continue to send mangoes and we continue to enjoy them once rejected by the recipient”, said a Customs official.   

Mangoes have been integral to the way Pakistan conducted diplomacy with India, according to some recent media reports. On many occasions, Sharif’s predecessors too, have let the ‘king of fruits’ do the talking. Mango diplomacy came in handy the second time when, last year, the fruit relished equally on both sides of the border were seen as a peace offering. 

As far as we are aware, Sharif’s mangoes were delivered to Prime Minister Modi, Sonia Gandhi and President Mukherjee.  ‘Insect attacks’ were not featured.