Centre taking conscious decision to depart from India’s foreign policy as it was previously understood: Former minister Salman Khurshid

Salman Khurshid was speaking at a panel discussion on the occasion of the release of the book, 'India’s Tryst With the World: A Foreign Policy Manifesto'.

Former minister Salman Khurshid has said that India is no longer working with the consensus-based foreign policy it was once known for.

“There has been a conscious decision to depart from foreign policy as we understood it in this country….

there was once a consensus which cut across divides and political parties,” the ex-foreign minister said at a Bengaluru event on Sunday.

He was speaking at a panel discussion titled ‘Has Trump 2.0 Commandeered India’s Foreign Policy?’, on the occasion of the release of the book, “India’s Tryst With the World: A Foreign Policy Manifesto”.

Khurshid also recalled the occasion on which then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had sent Atal Bihari Vajpayee (then leader of Opposition) to represent the country on the issue of Kashmir.

He added, “That was not a one-off thing, it was a standard manner in which we did foreign policy…”
Khurshid added that a big question was whether domestic politics had an influence on giving up the consensus in foreign policy.

He said that the conflicts involving Gaza, Ukraine-Russia, and now Iran had put the establishment in a position where “they no longer have anything to say.” He said, “You have to choose between friends and people that you can’t let go of…..what are friends for, if you can’t tell them if they are doing something wrong?

Particularly when they are doing something impacting India.”
The panel discussion also included speakers Nirupama Menon Rao (former Foreign Secretary and veteran IFS officer) and Suhasini Haidar (Diplomatic Editor at The Hindu ).

Nirupama Rao said, “The current government has not failed to advertise that we are a ‘vishwaguru’, that we stand for civilisational values and strategic autonomy….from that stems the reference to India being only on its own side, that we stand for multipolarity.

Let me caution, it is a messy multipolarity….it is essentially a new iteration of a “jungle book” in international politics.”
With regard to the recent sinking of the Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, Rao remarked that India could have been more vocal on the topic.

She explained, “Not just from the humanitarian aspect, the talk of being net security provider and first responder for tragedies…..we could have spoken a little more about the tragic aspect.

More than 100 sailors went down.”
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