India is Getting to Know Who its Friends Are, Says EAM Jaishankar

Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar.

(Photo: IANS/Twitter)

“Maybe we are getting to know who our friends really are (in the world),” said External Affairs Minister (EAM) Subrahmanyam Jaishankar while answering question on the international criticism to the Indian government’s recent policy decisions, including the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The minister was talking at the Global Business Summit in New Delhi on Saturday, 7 March. When he was asked, in reference to criticism from Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and the US Democrats, if India is losing friends because India has not been able to explain itself (on its policies), then Jaishankar said.

“It is a kind of geopolitical assessment, that there was time that India was very defensive. Our capabilities were less, our threats were more, our risks were higher. So, we adopted a policy of managing the world but staying away. We can’t do that anymore. As we get more capable as our confidence level goes; as our interest in the world goes, as their interest in us goes, we have to do the management in a different way.”

What Khamenei and US Democrats Say?

The question posed to the EAM was in reference to a statement Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran issued against new Citizenship Amendment Act.

“The hearts of Muslims all over the world are grieving over the massacre of Muslims in India. The Government of India should confront extremist Hindus and their parties and stop the massacre of Muslims in order to prevent India’s isolation from the world of Islam,” wrote Khamenei in a statement.

Similarly, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders had claimed that the recent the violence over CAA in Delhi was targeted specifically at a particular community. In a tweet he wrote:

On the International Perception of CAA

When asked if the international perception on CAA was due to the government’s inability to explain itself, Jaishankar pointed fingers at the media and said: “There are sections of the world outside the media. I engage governments. I was in Brussels, I had 27 foreign ministers in a room to whom I was talking. Point we make on CAA is that it can't be anybody's case that a Government and Parliament doesn't have the right to set terms of citizenship.”

India has tried to reduce the large number of stateless people we have in this country, he said:

“Everybody (countries) when they look at citizenship has a context. Show me a country in the world which says everybody is welcome. Nobody does that.”

On UNHCR Acting Against CAA

“She has been wrong before. I will give you an example. I have seen reports on J&K by the same body how carefully they skirt around the cross-border terror problem as if it’s nothing to do with country next door. We understand where they are coming from and how they have handled these issues in the past,” he said when asked about how United Nations Human Rights Council’s director Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger who doesn’t agree with his stand on CAA.