- Wednesday, November 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, one of India’s major opposition leaders, on Monday (6) took a dig at India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar saying the latter “does not understand the China threat” and added that prime minister Narendra Modi’s statement that “nobody has entered Indian territory” is an invitation to the Chinese forces to do it again.
Gandhi, who is currently in the UK where he has been addressing top institutions, said during a conversation with members of the Indian Journalists’ Association in London, that he supports New Delhi’s foreign policy and doesn’t have any big disagreement with over its position on the Russia-Ukraine war.
“As far as Indian foreign policy is concerned, I support the Indian foreign policy and I am okay with it. I don’t have a huge disagreement with it,” the 52-year-old said when asked a hypothetical question that if China or Pakistan invaded India and since India hadn’t taken a position on the Russia-Ukraine war, it could also be ignored by the world.
“With regards to an invasion, we have already been invaded. We have got 2,000 square kilometres of our territory that is in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the prime minister himself has stated that nobody has entered India, not a single inch of land has been taken and this destroyed our negotiation position because our negotiators are being asked what’s the fuss about,” the 52-year-old former president of the Congress said.
“Your prime minister says that no land has been taken. So that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect which I keep saying is India needs to be very, very careful with what the Chinese are doing at the border. The Chinese are acting in a hostile manner, in an aggressive manner and we need to be very very careful and I have been stating that again and again, I don’t think the penny has dropped in the government. I think there is a risk as you say,” he added.
Speaking about the Congress’s China policy, Gandhi said his party’s policy was that they would not allow anyone to enter Indian territory.
“The Congress party’s policy on China is very clear, we do not accept anybody entering our territory and pushing us around and bullying us. It doesn’t matter who they are, that’s not acceptable to us and what has happened is that the Chinese entered our territory, killed our soldiers and the prime minister has denied it,” he said.
“That’s the problem. The idea, we have a relationship with the United States and we have a partnership with them and we have a shred democratic free idea. I think there is a coercive idea on a planet and there is a democratic idea on a planet and I think a democratic planet needs to be strengthened.
“But you will not strengthen the democratic idea unless you start to fundamentally think about things like production. The huge amount of inequality that is erupting in the west and India is a threat to the democratic idea. We have to think about that. We have to have a strategy for that and that’s not on the table,” he added.
When asked about how India should deal with military threats, the Congress leader said, “You have to deal with military threats militarily. But you have to understand the nature of the threat and you have to respond to the nature of the threat. I had one conversation with the foreign minister in my view he doesn’t understand the threat.
“The government is not understanding the actual threat from China. The prime minister stating that nobody has entered our territory demonstrates that he does not understand the threat because the message to China with that statement is you can do it again,” Gandhi said during the conversation.
Jaishankar had earlier hit out at Gandhi over his criticism of the government related to the clash between the Indian and Chinese troops on the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, saying it was not the Congress leader but prime minister Modi who sent the army to the LAC as a counter-measure to deployment of troops by the Chinese and the opposition party should have the honesty to look at what had happened in 1962.
India were left humiliated by China in a border war in 1962. The country was then ruled by the Congress with Jawaharlal Nehru as the prime minister.
(With PTI inputs)
