It's understandable that Jaishankar was angry. The Hon’ble MPs were clearly asking about - and, therefore, comparing -India’s position in this Persian Gulf conflict with that of Pakistan. It seems the country’s military establishment, led by Donald Trump’s “favourite Field Marshal" Asim Munir, has been passing messages between Iran and the US, which has helped Trump proclaim a pause in the war till April 6. Pakistan has offered to host the talks; Turkiye and Egypt could be the other venues.

Whichever way you look at it, Pakistan has managed to insert itself into the global limelight these last 48 hours. Nothing may come of it in the coming week. Trump may still order a ground invasion of Iran.

But these Hon’ble MPs at the all-party meeting, otherwise mostly concerned about their impending polls in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Assam, had clearly noticed that something was seriously amiss, and not just because the price of their household gas cylinder has gone up.

Clearly, Jaishankar has a right to be angry. The Pakistani military establishment, which has orchestrated one horrendous attack after another upon innocent Indians, killing people again and again over the decades, from Mumbai to Pahalgam, needs to be called out for its heinous crimes - not applauded by no less than the most powerful man in the world, the US President.

Perhaps this is a good moment for India to do some soul-searching about the direction in which we, the people of an ancient and unique civilisation, are moving in this modern and fast-paced world. Mostly, Indians aren’t too concerned about foreign policy issues - we are satisfied that Prime Ministers as varied as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi mostly protect us from the big and bad influences abroad.

Some things we know. First, that India has become the world’s fourth largest economy, even though in per capita terms (about $2,700-3,000), we occupy the 140th place in the list of nations. Second, the Indian diaspora’s influence is exploding, especially in the US. And third, India’s chief rival on the world stage is China, not puny Pakistan.

Why, then, is puny Pakistan besting India by offering to mediate between the warring parties, the US and Iran - and more to the point, why is the world listening?

Let’s take a step back. Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. The right question is not whether Pakistan has succeeded in being one-up on India - that game can be played in many ways and on many occasions - but whether India has lived up to its own image of being a nation with a peculiar moral centre, one which has stood us in good stead since the freedom movement, which allows the occasional straying in pragmatic directions (like not speaking up when Netanyahu flattens Gaza or when Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine), but one which still won’t support an immoral or unjust fight.

This is India’s biggest strength - the need to return to the centre. So even if PM Modi went to Israel only two days before his host Benjamin Netanyahu, in conjunction with the US, ordered air strikes that sought to decimate Iran, the fact is that the Modi government has since been forced to abandon its earlier position of openly siding with US-Israel.

India probably thought, like Trump and Netanyahu, that Iran wouldn’t be able to resist the most powerful nations on earth. (Who would dare?) That, in any case, it had such huge stakes in the US-Israel-UAE triangle of nations - trade, diaspora, defence - and that an early position would earn it brownie points.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. By taking sides in an unfortunate and unjust war, India forsook the Middle Path that a son of India - Gautam Buddha - taught it several centuries ago.

The politically astute PM must have understood the widespread unease that followed the cold-blooded assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei by US missiles; or the bombing of a school in Minab, Iran, which the UNHRC is finally debating. Not that Indians were applauding Khamenei’s hardline religiosity or what he stood for; we were simply aghast at the impunity with which one or two countries were violating every rule in the book.

And so, although India has resisted an outright condemnation of Khamenei’s killing, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri was sent to the Iranian embassy in Delhi to sign the condolence book. Both Modi and Jaishankar have, since, spoken to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, respectively - even if it is to help India-flagged ships loaded with oil cross the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranians, bloodied but not bowed, have played the game in an even more sophisticated manner. They understood that Indians - ordinary folk in Kashmir collected money and jewels for their Iranian brethren, while the elite wrote opinion pieces in newspapers like The Tribune - were not fully comfortable with the government’s gambit. It seems that some Iranian missiles now have “thank you, India…" written on them.

That brings us to the several foreign policy learnings this week. First, talk to all sides, even if you don’t agree with them - so, both Iran and Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Second, listen to all sides - one reason why Indians were so surprised that Pakistan had made a successful bid to mediate between Iran and the US is because we no longer have access to the Pakistani media as all newspapers and TV channels and several X accounts have been banned since Operation Sindoor; if you hear only from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and not the Dawn and The News about what’s happening inside Pakistan, then your ability to both listen and understand will be circumscribed.

Which brings me to the third point, about reading your favourite Chanakya regularly - while you need to keep your friends close, you need to keep your enemies closer.