EAM Jaishankar praise PM Modi, says his practical attitude has key role in transforming US ties

New York, September 23: External affairs minister S Jaishankar lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying PM Modi’s practical attitude played a key role in transforming the India-US relationship in the last eight years.

 

He made this remark while addressing a session at Columbia University's School of International and public affairs in New York. He said for nearly five decades India looked upon the United States with suspicion and its overall foreign policy assessment of the US was of deep caution, but the country has now overcome the assumptions to forge a different relationship with America.

 

He said, “I will give you a very simple example. Take our attitude to the US. If you look at the attitude to the US from the 1940s to 2000 — till say Bill Clinton came to India — due to various reasons, I am not saying who is at fault, we regarded the US with wariness and suspicion. It was a substantive relationship but the overall foreign policy towards the US was of deep caution, if not deep suspicion.”

 

 

 

The minister, who was closely involved in negotiating the nuclear deal, said the agreement was a struggle even though the US was offering India clear advantages.

 

“What held us back was innate suspicion… It has taken us a lot of effort to overcome earlier assumptions to forge a different relationship with the US. And it was here, that over the past eight years, Modi’s leadership and the fact that he did not carry “ideological baggage” and was “not rooted in a worldview that makes you distant from the US” played a key role," he added.

 

“He has been practical, outcome-oriented, done a cost-benefit analysis, and focused on convergences. You would not have had that if we held on to earlier assumptions,” he said.

 

At the same time, the minister acknowledged that the rise of China has been the biggest global development in recent decades from political science and historical perspective, leading to the challenge of finding a modus vivendi between two rising powers in absolute proximity.

 

India’s relationship with China is “not normal”, Jaishankar added, in an allusion to the border situation.