NEW DELHI, India – February 21 (ONLINE) India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday hit back at Rahul Gandhi, leader of the biggest opposition Congress party, who recently suggested that incumbent foreign minister did not know much about foreign policy and “needed to learn some more”.
He also hit back at the Congress leader on his frequent criticism of what he describes as the government’s “defensive” China policy.
“If I would have to sum up this China thing, please do not buy this narrative that somewhere the government is on the defensive…somewhere we are being accommodative. I ask people if we were being accommodative who sent the Indian Army to the LAC (Line of Actual Control). Rahul Gandhi did not send them. Narendra Modi sent them,” Dr Jaishankar told news agency ANI in a special podcast.
“We have today the largest peacetime deployment in our history on the China border. We are keeping troops there at a huge cost with great effort. We have increased our infrastructure spending on the border five times in this government. Now tell me who is the defensive and accommodative person? Who is actually telling the truth? Who is depicting things accurately? Who is playing footsie with history?”
The Foreign Minister, taking a swipe at Rahul Gandhi over his foreign policy comment, said he was ready to listen to the Congress MP if he has “superior knowledge and wisdom” on China.
“I think he said this somewhere in a public meeting. It is probably in the context of China. All I can say in my defence is I have been the longest-serving ambassador in China. I have been dealing with a lot of these border issues for a very long time. I am not suggesting that I am necessarily the most knowledgeable person, but I would have a fairly good self-opinion of my understanding of what is up there. If he has superior knowledge and wisdom on China, I am always willing to listen. As I said, for me life is a learning process. If that is a possibility, I have never closed my mind to anything however improbable that may be,” Dr Jaishankar remarked.
Follow the PNI Facebook page for the latest news and updates.
