Govt. unable to tell its allies their actions are impacting India: Ex-EAM Salman Khurshid on ongoing West Asia conflict

Former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Sunday said that the ongoing conflicts around the world are impacting India, however the government is not able to tell its allies that their actions are hurting India.

Participating in a discussion on, “Has Trump 2.0 Commandeered India’s Foreign Policy? Reimagining India’s Role in the New Geo-Political Context”, here, Mr. Khurshid said that the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Iran and Israel war and what happened in Gaza and Palestine are impacting India.

“Now if we can’t even tell our friends that something is wrong and we believe it is wrong and that wrong is hurting us as well then what are friendships for,” Mr. Khurshid said.

He added that there is no consultation and communication between the government and the Opposition, which was a standard practice with all the previous Prime Ministers. “It was a standard practice that whatever you did, you projected a single voice across the world that was a common voice of the Opposition and the ruling party. That does not happen now. There is no consultation or communication. You don’t even debate in Parliament. You don’t know what the government is thinking and what it is doing. The government takes a position and they indicate that they don’t want to share,” he added.

Former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao said that India’s relationship with Iran is civilizational and that India should have spoken a little more and deplored the sinking of the Iranian ship IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka on March 4.

“India, being the largest country in the region, has always spoken about being the guardian of the Indian Ocean, and I am talking about the current government speaking about those terms. So when that tragedy happened, we could have afforded to say a little more,” she said.

“The American gaze on India is far more unsentimental than it ever ever was and it is demonstrated by the Trumpian tariffs. He sees tariffs as the panacea for all ills but it goes beyond that it truly inflicts pain on people, it causes damage, it does harm to our economies,” she added.

To a question on India’s image in the neighbourhood and if it still has friends, Suhasini Haidar, Diplomatic Editor, The Hindu, said India is circled by neighbours that are always in some kind of trouble.

She said that India’s neighbours have a deep sense of admiration for India and it is seen as an exemplar of certain values like secularism and pluralism. “In every one of our neighbours, there is a deep sense of admiration for what India had become, and it was equally a sense of admiration for the values that they themselves did not necessarily have. Secularism and pluralism were seen with admiration even in a very Islamic Pakistan and Bangladesh,” she said.

She added that many of India’s neighbours have a majoritarian population and a dominant religion, however the fact that India remains secular has been a point of admiration.

“I still believe India is a deeply secular country, a country that cherishes pluralism, but I do think questions are being asked now about our nature of pluralism. Questions have been asked about our democracy again, a point of admiration when you had military dictatorship or other kind or quasi authoritarianism in the neighbourhood and even if they were very popular in their countries they still look to India, look at our democratic and electoral processes with a matter of pride,” she added.