“Sometime politics of India doesn’t even originate within its borders… there is a phrase ‘war by other means’, this is politics by other means — you want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we (the BBC) decided to air after 20 years.”
New Delhi: “Actual politics” is being conducted “ostensibly as media” by people who do not have the “courage to come into the political field,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told ANI, a special report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
The minister was referring to the BBC documentary on the Gujarat riots that accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi of inaction,
Mr Jaishankar said barring China, India’s ties with other major powers were very good and felt both Russia and Ukraine knew that “if we can be of any use, we will be willing”. India was earlier involved in defusing the situation on the grain deal and the Zaporizhzhia power plant.
He said India would continue with the hands-off policy with respect to Pakistan despite its current economic difficulties.
“Nobody reaches a difficult situation suddenly and without cause. It is for them to find a way out. Our relationship today is not one where we can be relevant directly to that process,” he said.
Expounding on the BBC documentary, the minister said, “Sometime politics of India doesn’t even originate within its borders… there is a phrase ‘war by other means’, this is politics by other means — you want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we (the BBC) decided to air after 20 years.”
Although the documentary has come over a year before the Lok Sabha poll in 2024, he questioned the timing of its release.
“I mean, come on, you think the timing is accidental! Let me tell you one thing — I don’t know if the election season has started in India, Delhi or not, but, for sure it has started in London, New York,” he said.
“What is happening is, just like I told you — this drip, drip, drip — how do you shape a very extremist image of India, of the government, of the BJP, of the Prime Minister. I mean, this has been going on for a decade,” he said of some western media’s bias against PM Modi.
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