Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP and former bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar questioned whether foreign minister S Jaishankar is suffering from amnesia or if he is just “cuddling up to the BJP for his unprecedented promotion as foreign minister”. “Strange — that Jaishanker discovered his angst against the Gandhis — after serving them most loyally and taking the best of postings under them?” the former bureaucrat said.
* This comes after Jaishankar’s interview with ANI editor Smita Prakash in which he recounted his entry to politics from the field of diplomacy. Jaishankar said he joined the BJP because BJP is the right party at the right time for India’s rise and progress.
As Jaishankar criticised the Congress, he said his father Dr K Subrahmanyam was removed as secretary, defence production, by Indira Gandhi after she returned to power in 1980 and his father was superseded during the Rajiv Gandhi period with someone junior. “And he was the most knowledgeable person everybody would say on defence,” Jaishankar said about his father.
In that context, Jawhar Sircar quoted Jaishankar’s father on the Gujarat riots. “K Subramanyam said ‘Dharma was killed in Gujarat (2002 Riots). Those whoo failed to protect innocent citizens are guilty of adharma. Rama…would have used his bow against the ‘Asura’ rulers of Gujarat’. Shame on son — serving Asura!” Sircar tweeted.
The Gujarat riots were at the centrestage of the BBC row as the UK-based broadcaster came on the radar of the income tax department soon after it released a two-part documentary on the riots, questioning the role of Narendra Modi. As Jaishankar, in his interview, said the timing of the BBC documentary is not accidental and is rather political, the Trinamool MP said, “Question is: Are the facts shown true or false? Could thousands of lives be saved if Modi administration was less indulgent?”