Congress MP Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday targeted External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, saying he is indulging in “Nehru-bashing to ingratiate himself even more with the Prime Minister”. He also said the foreign minister has lost “all intellectual honesty and objectivity”. “Every time I read statements made by the erudite and dapper External Affairs Minister on Nehru, I can only recall the numerous parikramas he would make around Nehruvians for his plum postings,” Ramesh said in a tweet. “I can understand that he is a neo-convert who has to indulge in Nehru-bashing to ingratiate himself even more with the Prime Minister.”
Ramesh, who is the party’s general secretary in charge of communications, said Jaishankar was expected to bend but he was now crawling. “People with integrity are cringing. Very sad.”
While Ramesh did not mention any specific statements by the EAM, his comments came hours after Jaishankar made some scathing observations about the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies on China.
In an interview with news agency ANI, Jaishankar raised Nehru’s move to reject the US proposal to join the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The former prime minister had declined a proposal to join the UNSC, saying he won’t do it “at the cost of China”.
“Even when it came, for example to the UN Security Council seat, it’s not my case that we should have necessarily taken the seat, it’s a different debate, but to say that we should first let China — China’s interest should come first, it’s a very peculiar statement to make,” the EAM said.
Jaishankar, a career diplomat who served as foreign secretary from 2015 to 2018, said that India’s foreign policy in the last 75 years had a strain of realism about China and a strain of idealism, romanticism, and non-realism. “It begins right from day one, there is a sharp difference of opinion — how to respond to China between Nehru and Sardar Patel.”
“The alternative strain which starts from Nehru’s China’s first policy — first let China take a seat, then we will see for India. From China’s first policy, it ends up as Chindia policy.”
Jaishankar also commented upon the ‘Panchsheel’ agreement signed between the Tibet region of China and India signed on April 29, 1954. During the interview, the minister was asked whether India always lost to China at the mind games. “I don’t think we always lost out, but at various points of time, when we talk about the parts of the past today would be very difficult to understand, Panchsheel agreement is another such example,” he said.
Nehru is often attacked by the BJP for turning down the proposal to take the seat at UNSC. In a tweet in September last year, the BJP said: “Today, while India, under the leadership of PM Modi is shaping the world, and the world is backing the country’s bid for a permanent UNSC seat, which Nehru gave away to China on a platter… The unpatriotic deeds of the Gandhi family haunt our history, to date.”
Watch: EAM S. Jaishankar Affirms India’s Stand Against Terrorism-Driven Negotiations With Pakistan
