India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar slammed the BBC for its documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and PM Modi’s alleged role as he called it a hatchet job and “politics by other means”. He also criticised Rahul Gandhi for questioning India and China policy saying it was Modi who dispatched troops to the LAC to counter Beijing.
“We are not debating a documentary or a speech someone gave in a European city. We are debating politics which is being conducted ostensibly. There is a phrase, ‘war by other means’. This is politics by other means,” he said in an interview. “You do a hatchet job and say this is just a mission for truth which we decided to put out 20 years later. Do you think timing is accidental? Don’t know if election season has started in India, but for sure it has started in London and New York,” he added.
He agreed that certain people in the West are having issues accepting the rise of India under Prime Minister Modi. “Do you doubt it? It’s like drip, drip, drip on a stone. . . How do you shape a very extremist image of India, the government of BJP, of the PM? It has been going on for a decade. Let’s not have illusions about it,” he said. “Today, India’s global standing is clearly very much higher and quite strong. We’ve been able to demonstrate to the world that we are an exceptional international power,” said Jaishankar.
In a rebuttal to Congress over allegations pertaining to China, he said, “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 when it has happened.”