NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S. Jaishankar on Tuesday slammed the BBC documentary that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the timing was “not accidental” and that the “election season has started in London and New York”, in an obvious reference to the approaching Indian general elections next year.
In a candid interview with a news agency on Tuesday, Jaishankar wondered why a documentary was not made over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. He said: “This (the BBC documentary issue) is politics by another means. You think the timing is accidental? … The election season has started in London and New York… There are many things that happened in Delhi in 1984. Why didn’t we see documentary on that?”
Jaishankar added: “There are ideologies and political forces outside India that are very similar to those in India and the two are working hand in glove. When (certain) political forces are not doing well in India, they tend to summon up this support system and echo-chamber” leading to a “ding-dong” between the two.”
In an oblique reference to certain media organisations in the West considered hostile to the current Indian government, he said, “There is a mindset, an ideology. There is a battle of narratives (abro-ad) and not just in the anglosphere newspapers. Sometimes, the audience is deliberately deaf. There is a very strong bias. We saw this bias in the last four years… We expect it to grow,” the minister said, pointing at the coverage of developments such as the revoking of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Jaishankar said the politics of India “doesn’t stop at its borders” and sometimes does not even originate from here. He lashed out at “politics by those who don’t have the courage to come into the political field,” adding that such persons and organisations have a “Teflon cover” in the form of some NGOs and media organisations, “but they are playing politics”.
On the China border row, the foreign minister slammed the Congress for their accusations against the government. He said: “If we were being accommodative (towards China), who sent the Indian Army to the LAC? Rahul Gandhi didn’t send them. The PM sent them (for the defence of the country).”
He added: “We have the largest peacetime deployment in history on the border with China and are keeping them at a huge cost and great effort.”
Jaishankar pointed out that the Modi government, during its tenure, has stepped up spending on border infrastructure by four to five times, from about `3,000 crores to about `14,000 crores. Asked why the current border row with China has not been sorted out despite multiple rounds of talks, he said it was because India “cannot concede to claims that are not reasonable”.
Jaishankar said that India’s global standing is “much higher” and “quite good and strong” under the Modi administration. He said the Gulf nations, for instance, think Mr Modi is “more serious and credible”.
When asked about his first meeting with Modi, Jaishankar said it happened in Beijing in 2011, when he was the Indian ambassador there and Modi was visiting as Gujarat Chief Minister. Talking about the politicians he had met as an India Foreign Service officer, he referred to the PM and said he had “never met someone who was better prepared and more serious”.
Referring to the Union Cabinet, he said it is “very much a team” and “you don’t do your own thing”. He said the BJP is a “party that captures aspirations of India the best”.
Talking about his father K. Subrahmanyam, an IAS officer and one of India’s foremost defence analysts, he said his father was appointed as one of the youngest Union secretaries during the tenure of the Janata Party government in the late 1970s and that he was removed from the post of secretary (Defence Production) by then PM Indira Gandhi when her Congress party returned to power in 1980.
