New Delhi External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday rubbished Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the government’s handling of the border standoff with China, and accused the foreign media of indulging in “politics by another means” by painting an “extremist image” of India.
In a wide-ranging interview with ANI, Jaishankar described the report card for the government’s foreign policy as “very solid”, and said India’s global standing is “clearly very much higher” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Strategically today, there is much greater clarity in our own thinking and operations and I say that as an implementer of foreign policy,” he said.
Rejecting Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of the government’s handling of the standoff with China on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, Jaishankar said it is not the Congress leader but Modi who sent the army to the region as a countermeasure to Chinese troop deployments. The government hiked spending on border infrastructure by five times, he added.
Referring to criticism by the Congress and other opposition parties over the Chinese building a bridge on the banks of Pangong Lake last year, he said the area has been under the illegal occupation of China since the 1962 war.
“When did that area actually come under Chinese control? They (Congress) must have some problem understanding words beginning with C. I think they are deliberately misrepresenting the situation. The Chinese first came there in 1958 and the Chinese captured it in October 1962. Now you are going to blame the Modi government in 2023 for a bridge [in an area] which the Chinese captured in 1962 and you don’t have the honesty to say that it is where it happened,” Jaishankar said.
While noting that former premier Rajiv Gandhi had signed border management agreements with China in 1993 and 1996, he said he didn’t think those pacts were wrong. “I think those agreements were signed at that time because we needed to stabilise the border. And they did stabilise the border,” he said.
Asked about the Congress’s contention that the government is defensive and reactive on China, Jaishankar said there is currently the largest peacetime deployment along the LAC. “Please do not buy this narrative that somewhere the government is on the defensive…somewhere we are being accommodative. I ask people if we were being accommodative, who sent the Indian Army to the LAC? Rahul Gandhi did not send them. Narendra Modi sent them,” he said.
In a reference to a recent BBC documentary on the 2002 sectarian violence in Gujarat and critical reports on the Indian government, Jaishankar accused the foreign media of being ostensibly involved in domestic politics. “Sometimes, the politics of India doesn’t even originate in its borders, it comes from outside,” he said.
“We are not debating just a documentary or a speech that somebody gave in a European city or a newspaper edit somewhere…we are debating actually politics, which is being conducted ostensibly as media…This is politics by another means. I mean you…want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we decided after 20 years to put out at this time,” he said.
“I mean…you think the timing is accidental? Let me tell you one thing, I don’t know if the election season has started in Delhi or not, but for sure it has started in London, New York,” he added.
The foreign media, he suggested, is engaged in paining a “very extremist image” of India, the government, the BJP and the Prime Minister. “Why is there suddenly a surge of reports…were some of these things not happening earlier? Many things happened in Delhi in 1984, why don’t we see a documentary on that?” Jaishankar said.
He added, “I know there are certain people who believe that their view supersedes elections. Look, I like you, you win an election, great democracy. I don’t like you [and you] win the election. What are you, an electoral autocracy.”
Jaishankar said India’s relations with all major powers are very good, except for China, adding that in the context of the Ukraine crisis, both Russia and Ukraine know that “if we can be of any use, we will be willing”. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks to Russian President Vladimir Putin last September — “today’s era is not of war” — reflected a widely shared sentiment. Modi wants to create a momentum for peace and has had conversations with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he noted.