Chennai: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said India has every right to defend its people when it comes to “bad neighbours” and asserted that a neighbouring country cannot ask New Delhi to share water if it continues to spread terrorism in the country.
At the same time, he said with “good neighbours”, India invests, helps and shares, whether it was vaccines during Covid-19 pandemic, fuel and food support during the Ukraine conflict or the $4 billion assistance to Sri Lanka during its financial crisis.
Without naming Pakistan, Jaishankar said India has every right to defend its people when it comes to “bad neighbours” and nobody can tell the country how to exercise that right.
“…People make it sound as diplomacy is rocket science. It is common sense..Now, what do you do in common sense with a neighbour? If you have a neighbour who is good to you or at least who is not harmful to you, your natural instinct is to be kind, is to help that neighbour. If the neighbour has a problem, you would like to contribute in some way. If nothing else, you will say hello…You will try to build friendships, bonding, etc. And that’s what we do as a country,” he said in a fireside chat at IIT Madras here.
“So, when you look around our neighbourhood, wherever actually there is a sense of good neighbourliness, I think you have seen India invests, India helps, India shares. Now, when you have bad neighbours, and if a country decides that they will deliberately, persistently, unrepentantly continue with terrorism, we have a right to defend our people against terrorism. We will exercise that right. How we exercise that right is up to us.”
“You know, nobody can tell us what we should do or not. We will do whatever we have to do to defend ourselves. That’s a common sense proposition,” he said.
The Union minister said many years ago, we (India and Pakistan) agreed to a water sharing arrangement, “…But if you had decades of terrorism, there is no good neighbourliness. If there is no good neighbourliness, you don’t get the benefits of that good neighbourliness. You cannot say please share water with me, but I will continue terrorism with you. That is not reconcilable.”
The Union minister said it is important to communicate with other countries to avoid a situation where India’s intentions are misread.
“How to prevent people from misreading you is to communicate. If you communicate well, clearly and honestly, other countries and other people respect it and accept it.” A lot of people across the world are proud of their culture, tradition and heritage. I see no reason why we should not be,” he said.
He pointed out that there are “really very few” ancient civilisations that have survived to become major modern nation states, and India is one of them. “We have a sense of our past which very few countries have… It was our decision to opt for a democratic political model, which made the very idea of democracy as a universal political concept.”
“Had we not gone that way, the democratic model, as we know it, would have been regional and narrow… Partnership with the West is also important, and that is how we shape the world,” he said.
