Hyderabad: Foreign minister Dr. S. Jaishankar on Tuesday called out the role of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for most problems that the country faces on the foreign policy front, and said that the Narendra Modi government had tried to rectify them in the last 10 years.
“In the diffident era of the past, India’s focus was on non-alignment, whereas after 2014 we entered the confident era. India is a Vishwabandhu. We have no problem with anybody except a few. Our foreign policy is now guided by our supreme national interest,” Dr. Jaishankar said at a seminar, ‘Foreign Policy the India Way: Diffidence to Confidence,’ organised by Forum for Nationalist Thinkers.
Dr Jaishankar said most of the country’s problems had started in the early years of Independence. “India’s biggest challenge has always been China. But we, at times, looked away. In 1950, one of the last things that Sardar Patel told Nehru was about China. In his letter, Patel told Nehru, ‘I have seen reports on the friendship between India and China. We may consider China to be our friend, but do they consider us as friends too?’,” Dr Jaishankar said.
The foreign minister said Sardar Patel had alerted Nehru that India could face a two-front war for the first time in its history with China arriving at its borders. “Nehru wrote back saying that China attacking India was inconceivable. But the inconceivable happened in 1962 when China attacked India,” Dr Jaishankar said.
He also accused Nehru of putting China’s interest ahead of India’s by refusing a proposal for a seat as a Permanent Member in the United Nations Security Council.
“When China attacked India, Nehru wrote to the US President seeking help to fight Beijing, which is the correct thing to do. But he was more concerned about the impact of the US help on his image,” he said.
The minister said India’s relations with the US remained strained for a long time and the reason was Nehru’s closeness to China. In fact, Dr B.R. Ambedkar and C. Rajagopolachari wanted India to be closer to the US to gain from its advanced economy.
Dr Jaishankar said Nehru also complicated the Jammu and Kashmir issue by referring it to the United Nations. “We corrected it by ending Article 370,” he explained.
Hitting out at the Congress-led UPA government, Dr. Jaishankar said: “When Mumbai was attacked in 2008, the government analysed all scenarios and came to a conclusion that the cost of attacking Pakistan would be more than the cost of not attacking Pakistan.”
Many things, Dr Jaishankar said, had changed in the last 10 years. “One, of course, is the economy. In 2013, we were among the Fragile Five and now we are one of the top five economies. We deal with countries with confidence. The leaders of other countries respect our Prime Minister Modi,” he said.
“We welcome investment to set up business from any country but the manpower running it must be from India. We started reducing defence imports and increasing weapon exports. We are also ensuring Indians working abroad are treated well,” Dr Jaishankar said.
Speaking about the proposal for redistribution of wealth, the foreign minister said, “After 1991, everyone thought there was a consensus on a growth-oriented economic model. But the recent events suggest that the mindset of one particular party remains unchanged. This is dangerous and we must guard against such thinking. Welfare is important. But it must be channelled through jobs and business.”
