Will listen if Rahul Gandhi has superior wisdom on China, says EAM S Jaishankar

Top Highlights

• External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that the government is not defensive on China, but it is accommodative.
• Reacting to Congress and other opposition parties' outrage over the Chinese building a bridge on the Pangong Lake, Dr Jaishankar said the area had been under illegal occupation of China since the 1962 war.
• Talking about the BBC documentary on PM Modi, the minister said the timing of the BBC documentary is "not accidental" and called it "politics by another means".

 

Lashing out at senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has been targeting the Centre over China's aggression on the LAC in eastern Ladakh, External Affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that if Gandhi had a better or “superior knowledge and wisdom" on China, he is ready to listen to him. 

It is to be noted that Gandhi has criticised the Narendra Modi-led 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 an exclusive interview. 

"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 in 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 said during the interaction. 

Talking about Congress and other opposition parties’ constant criticism over Chinese constructions at the Pangong Lake region in Ladakh, Jaishankar said the area had been under illegal occupation of China since the 1962 war. 

 "When did that area actually come under Chinese control? They (Congress) must have some problem understanding words beginning with 'C'. I think they are deliberately misrepresenting the situation. The Chinese first came there in 1958 and the Chinese captured it in October 1962. Now you are going to blame the Modi government in 2023 for a bridge which the Chinese captured in 1962 and you don't have the honesty to say that it is where it happened," Dr Jaishankar added. 

He said China was a bigger economy and India was responding to the situation that China has created along the LAC in Ladakh by violating border agreements. 

"They are the bigger economy what I am going to do? I am a smaller economy. Am I going to sort of pick up a fight with a bigger economy? It is not a question of reacting. It is a question of common sense. We had an agreement that we are not supposed to bring to the borders in large numbers...because it is in our interest to stabilize our borders or a situation it is not out of love affection or sentiment. It is a core calculation," he said. 

He further said that former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi went to Beijing in 1988 and signed agreements in 1993 and 1996 in an attempt to stabilise the border, which they did. 

The opposition party should have the honesty to look at what happened in 1962. "What happens you do this smoke and mirror, oh there is something happening here it is almost like 1962 never happened," Jaishankar said, adding that it was important to call out the Congress on its blunders. 

“Personally, I can get into a blame game, what happened in 1962, it happened, but now if you whitewash all that everything happened only in 2023... I have to call you (Congress) out," Dr Jaishankar said. 

On BBC Series on PM Modi 

Talking about the controversy over the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dr Jaishankar said that "actual politics" is being conducted "ostensibly as media" by people who do not have the "courage to come into the political field."

He said that in modern-day politics, sometimes politics doesn't even originate within the country, it comes from outside.