In an exclusive interview with ANI, External affairs minister S Jaishankar has spoken on various topics about his journey from foreign service to politics and shed light on a range of other issues, including Congress's allegations, the timing of BBC's documentary on PM Modi, and tensions with China.

 

 

 

Speaking about the BBC's recent documentary critical of PM Modi, Jaishankar said that the timing of the incident was curious "Do you think the timing was accidental? I don’t know if election season has started in India, but for sure it has started in London and New York. This is politics at play by those who don’t have the courage to come into the political field," said the minister.

 

On repeated anti-India narratives by Western media and NGOs, the minister said that it is part of a larger narrative: "Don’t view this incident by incident. Think of the last few years - an episode here, an adjective there, a photo somewhere else. It’s like drip, drip, drip on a stone ... the idea is to shape your collective image in a way that you're made to look like an extremist."

 

 

In a scathing attack at Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who has been targeting the Centre over China's aggression along the LAC, Jaishankar said, "Please do not buy this narrative that the Indian government is on the defensive, that we are being accommodative … If we were being accommodative, then who sent the Indian Army to LAC? Rahul Gandhi didn’t send them. Narendra Modi sent them ... It should be asked who's telling the truth."

 

Referring to Congress and other opposition parties outraging over the Chinese building a bridge on the Pangong Lake last year, the Minister said the area had been under illegal occupation of China since the 1962 war.

 

"They (China) were building a bridge in Pangong Tso. When did that area come under China? The Chinese first came there in 1958 captured it in 1962. The Modi government is being blamed in 2023 for constructing a bridge that was captured in 1962? You [Congress] don’t have honesty to say when it happened?," said the minister.

 

 

Jaishankar wondered if there was no bias in the release of the documentary, then why wasn't there a similar series on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. "Why suddenly there is a surge of reports and attention and views? I mean, were some of these things not happening earlier. Many things happened in Delhi in 1984, why don't we see a documentary on that? If that was your concern, you suddenly feel one day, "I am very humanistic, I must get justice for people who have been wronged, " he said.

 

He said we must not get fooled by such agendas and challenged the propogators to come out in the political field.