External affairs minister S Jaishankar hit back at Jairam Ramesh after the Congress leader accused him of intellectual dishonesty, calling him a 'neo-convert' who indulges in Nehru bashing for 'plum postings.'
In an exclusive one-on-one with Business Today Executive Director Rahul Kanwal, Jaishankar said, "Those who work for a family think everyone else works for a family. I cleared an exam. Earned my postings. We did not work for a family".
The special will be aired at 8 pm on India Today. Jairam Ramesh, who is the Congress 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."
Jaishankar had questioned 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 had 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."