‘India not trying to control every political move of every neighbour,’ says S Jaishankar

India did not provide financial assistance or engage in projects with neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to control their internal politics, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event hosted by foreign policy think tank Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, the minister said that the financial assistance of about $4.5 billion provided by New Delhi to Colombo since 2022, when the island nation plunged into economic crisis, was not offered unconditionally.

“It was not that we had a political conditionality which accompanied that [financial assistance],” he said. “We were doing it as a good neighbour who did not want to see that kind of economic meltdown at our doorstep.”

The external affairs minister’s comment came in response to a question about the apparent lack of benefits India got in return for the assistance it had provided to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Jaishankar said: “I think what happens politically in Sri Lanka, that’s for their politics to work with at the end of the day.”

He added that it was not New Delhi’s intention to suggest that the political dynamics in the neighbouring countries must adhere to what is of benefit to India.

The comment came a day after Leftist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was sworn-in as Sri Lanka’s president.

The case of Bangladesh was a “bit different”, Jaishankar said, adding that the two countries were involved in projects over the past decades that benefitted both sides. “Both countries have gained a lot out of that,” he said.

“I would urge you not to be deterministic about it”, he said. “It’s not as though India is seeking to control every political move of every neighbour.”

In August, an interim government backed by the Bangladeshi military came to power in Dhaka after the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina regime following widespread protests.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain said in September that the interim government may review specific memoranda of understanding signed with India if they are not beneficial to its interests.

India-China relations ‘significantly disturbed’

Responding to a separate question, Jaishankar said that the relations between India and China are “significantly disturbed”.

Border tensions between India and China have increased since June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It had led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing had said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve the border standoff.

On Tuesday, the external affairs minister said that New Delhi and Beijing had over several decades “established a series of agreements, each going into greater detail” to ensure that the border remained peaceful.

However, he said, China moved a large number of military units to the Line of Actual Control in 2020, thereby violating these agreements. “Once troops were deployed very close up, which is ‘very dangerous’, it was likely a mishap could happen, and it did happen,” Jaishankar said.

The stand-off has overshadowed the ties between the two neighbours, Jaishankar said, adding that it will be difficult to advance other aspects of the bilateral relationship until peace is restored at the border.

Jaishankar said that the focus of the negotiations with China has been to mainly disengage the forward-deployed troops.

Clarifying his comment from September that there had been 75% progress in the talks between India and China, Jaishankar said: “When I said 75% of it has been sorted out, I was asked in a way to quantify – it’s only regarding the disengagement.”

Jaishankar said that India’s strengthening relations with the United States were the biggest “foreign policy” and “strategic transformation of our lives”.

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