- Thursday, April 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar remarked during his recent visit to the Dominican Republic that each of New Delhi’s engagements has its own particular weight and focus, be it with the US, Europe, Russia or Japan, and the South Asian nation tries to ensure that all ties progress without seeking exclusivity.
However, he said that China falls into a different category.
The diplomat said this in his address at the MIREX — the ministry of external relations of the Dominican Republic or Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores — where he was on a visit between April 27 and 29.
At MIREX, Jaishankar said: “For the first time in 2015, prime minister Narendra Modi articulated a comprehensive view that spanned the entirety of the Indian Ocean and its Islands. These subsequently became the building blocks for the Indo-Pacific vision that emerged thereafter. To the north, India has been similarly pursuing a strategy of connecting to Central Asia more effectively and this has taken the form of structured engagements across multiple domains”.
“These concentric circles of priority give you a conceptual sense of Indian diplomacy and one that we have pursued very assiduously over the last decade. But at a higher level, we are also practising the approach of engaging all significant centres of power, such multi-alignment reflects the reality of multi-polarity,” he added.
Jaishankar said each engagement has its own particular weight and focus.
“Whether it is the United States, Europe, Russia or Japan, we are trying to ensure that all ties, all these ties advance without seeking exclusivity,” he said, without mentioning China.
He added, “China falls into a somewhat different category because of the boundary dispute and the currently abnormal nature of our ties.”
Making India’s stand clear about China’s activities at the Line of Actual Control, Jaishankar said that is “an outcome of a violation of agreements regarding border management by them”.
“The rise of China and India in a parallel time frame is also not without its competitive aspects,” he added.
The minister said India’s most pressing priorities are obviously in its neighbourhood. Given India’s size and economic strength, it is very much for the collective benefit that India takes a generous and non-reciprocal approach to cooperation with smaller neighbours.
“And that’s exactly what we have done in the last decade under prime minister Modi and this in our region has come to be known as the Neighborhood First Policy,” Jaishankar said.
India has seen a dramatic expansion in connectivity, contacts, in cooperation across the region.
“The exception to this of course is Pakistan in view of the cross-border terrorism that it supports. But whether it is the Covid challenge or more recent debt pressures, India has always stepped up for its neighbours,” the Indian diplomat said.
India has extended more than $4 billion of notable economic support to Sri Lanka.
“Beyond South Asia, India is developing the concept of extended neighbourhoods, extended neighbourhoods in all directions, with the ASEAN this has taken the form of what we call the Act East Policy, which has opened up a pathway to a deeper engagement with the Indo-Pacific that is being pursued amongst others, through a mechanism called the Quad,” Jaishankar said on the expansion of India’s ties.
Jaishankar was on a nine-day visit to Guyana, Panama, Colombia and the Dominican Republic from April 21.
(With PTI inputs)
