'Expected To Bend. Now Crawling': Congress On Jaishankar After Remark On Nehru Policies

Ramesh called Jaishankar a "neo-convert" and said that the latter is indulging in "Nehru-bashing to ingratiate himself even more" with PM Narendra Modi.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has slammed External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for his comments on the country's first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru during a recent interview and said that the minister " has lost all intellectual honesty and objectivity" while indulging in "Nehru-bashing".

"Every time I read statements made by the erudite and dapper External Affairs Minister on Nehru, I can only recall the numerous parikramas he would make around Nehruvians for his plum postings," the Congress MP said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"I can understand that he is a neo-convert who has to indulge in Nehru-bashing to ingratiate himself even more with the Prime Minister. But in doing so, he has lost all intellectual honesty and objectivity," he further said.

Intensifying his attacks on the EAM, Ramesh added, "He was expected to bend. He is now crawling. People with integrity are cringing. Very sad."

The comments came in response to Jaishankar's recent interview with news agency ANI where he expressed dissatisfaction over Nehru's way of handling China and said the same has be done in a realistic manner that was there in the mind of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and at present, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Even when it came, for example to the UN Security Council seat, it's not my case that we should have necessarily taken the seat, it's a different debate, but to say that we should first let China -- China's interest should come first, it's a very peculiar statement to make," Jaishankar told ANI in the interview.

"It takes two hands to clap. I pose the issue in this manner if you look at the last 75 plus years of our foreign policy, they have a strain of realism about China and have a strain of idealism, romanticism, non-realism. It begins right from day one, there is a sharp difference of opinion -- how to respond to China between Nehru and Sardar Patel," the foreign affairs minister said while speaking on the future of the India-China relationship in 2024.