NEW DELHI: India is looking for partners and not preachers who don’t practice what they preach at home, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Sunday in a swipe at Europe. Underlining India’s position on ties with Europe, the minister said for any partnership to flourish, it’s important to be sensitive to each other’s concerns.
Jaishankar has expressed the same sentiment on several occasions in the past few years amid differences over India’s expansion of energy ties with Moscow after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out. On this occasion, his comments also followed repeated calls by Western countries for India to not escalate tensions with Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. Calling the situation alarming, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, after a conversation with Jaishankar and her Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar, had urged restraint saying escalation helped no one.
“When we look out at the world, we look for partners; we do not look for preachers, particularly preachers who do not practice at home and preach abroad. I think some of Europe is still struggling with that problem. Some of it has changed,” Jaishankar said, while adding Europe has “entered a certain zone of reality check”.
“Now, whether they are able to step up to it or not, it is something we will have to see. But from our point of view, if we are to develop a partnership, there has to be some understanding, there has to be some sensitivity, there has to be a mutuality of interest and there has to be a realisation of how the world works,” he said.
The minister was also critical of earlier attempts by the West to find a solution to the Russia-Ukraine war without involving Russia, saying it “challenged the basics of realism”.
“Just like I am an advocate of Russia realism, I am also an advocate of America realism,” he said at the ‘Arctic Circle India Forum’.
“I think the best way to engage today’s America is also through finding mutuality of interests rather than putting ideological differences upfront and then allowing it to cloud the possibilities of working together,” he added.