External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar Questions Bids To Hyphenate India With Pakistan

"Often the argumentation comes from people who have a viewpoint that we shouldn't have done anything about (Article) 370," Jaishankar said, adding he has a "very little tolerance" for that.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. (Image: ANI)

Washington: The attempts to hyphenate India with Pakistan post Article 370 abrogation are being made by people "over-obsessed" about it, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said here, questioning how can one country be compared with the other which is one-eighth of its economic size. The Indian government decided to revoke the special status to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two Union Territories on August 5. Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked after India abrogated provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution, evoking strong reactions from Pakistan. India has categorically told the international community that the scrapping of Article 370 was an internal matter and also advised Pakistan to accept the reality. "You are really being very semantic about it. How do you hyphenate a country, which is one-eighth of your economic size , which is 'reputationally' your exact opposite?" Jaishankar told a group of Indian reporters on Monday, virtually taking exceptions to India and Pakistan being talked of in the same breath. The external affairs minister was responding to a query about India and Pakistan being "hyphenated" once again following abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution. By that logic then, India should not do anything which would bring Pakistan into the conversation at all, he said. "So, let's not talk Afghanistan. In fact, let's not talk South Asia. So, my sense is people are over obsessed about it," he said. "Often the argumentation comes from people who have a viewpoint that we shouldn't have done anything about (Article) 370," Jaishankar said, adding he has a "very little tolerance" for that. Jaishankar arrived here on Sunday night from New York after attending the annual General Assembly session of the United Nations along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session, the two leaders held bilateral meetings with dozens of world leaders.