But then the fact is that each and every Nepali knows this hard truth and F.S Shyam Saran has told what independent intellectuals reiterate here day in day out. Should this mean that since it has come from India, it has got to be appreciated and acted upon in letter and spirit?

Saran, to recall, during his Ambassadorial stint in Kathmandu used to say that his government did not know about the whereabouts of the Maoists in India. Later he changed his posture and indicated that should his country be informed of the hideouts of the rebels in India, his country would do the needful that satisfied the Nepali establishment.

Now as the Foreign Secretary of India, Shyam Saran, thanks Almighty, openly admits that the Nepal’s Maoists insurgency had already become a “shared challenge” for both Nepal and India.

In effect, Ambassador Saran’s pretension that New Delhi did not know of the whereabouts of Maoists leadership in India got exposed when Madhav Nepal beamingly declared that he met Comrade Prachanda and his colleagues in Lucknow and that he had four hour long talks with the rebel leaders.

Surely Madhav Nepal embarrassed India to the hilt then which fortunately forced the Indian authorities to changed their structured policy vis-à-vis the Nepali rebels taking shelter in India.

It is not that F.S Shyam Saran has forwarded bad advice to Nepal and her political leaders plus the King. He is correct when he says, “the need of the hour is reconciliation and unity among democratic forces so as to put together a united front against the Maoists”.

With all good intentions in his heart, F.S Saran knows it well that Nepal’s political forces don’t trust the King and vice versa and this is what is benefiting the Maoists.

Saran has urged the King and the political parties to overcome the tendency implying that the two must come together.

F.S Saran nonetheless assures Nepal that his country was doing her best. In the same vein, he also sends messages to Nepal that if India were not extending support to Nepal in curbing the Maoists threat, a shared challenge for both in his own words, “your situation would be very, very difficult”.

Here F.S Saran forgets to understand the fact that when it is a “shared challenge” then whatever India was doing in this regard was guided by her own exclusive interests in defending her own security concerns.

Corollary of this would be that had the Maoists been not a shared challenge for India as well, she would not have exhibited her keen interest in curbing the Maoists threat as she did in the recent past.

Question now arises as to whether a bureaucrat of the stature of F.S Saran deserved the right to forward suggestions to a neighboring country’s establishment and political forces through the use of a seminar?

Should this mean that Nepal’s foreign secretary too possesses the right to send similar suggestions to India on matters that constitute a shared problem for both the neighboring countries?

Interestingly enough, F.S Saran maintains “The Maoist programme had some “progressive” elements in it”. He however, does not reveal as to which elements in the Maoists programmes constituted progressive elements? Is he hinting at the first four points contained in the forty-point demands of the Maoists that the rebels submitted to the Deuba government in 1996?

Worth mentioning here would be that the first four demands among the forty points of the Maoists deal with relations with India. In the process Sharan, might have forgotten that those demands are basically anti-Indian. Is it that FS Saran hinting at these very demands as being progressive ones as well?

Be that as it may, FS Saran’s expressions are genuine and friendly.

He is a changed personality now than what he used to be while being in Kathmandu as India’s Ambassador.