Gulf reaction payback for rejecting US report: Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi, June 6

Is the summoning of Indian envoys by Qatar, Kuwait and Oman a payback for the curt Indian dismissal of a US government report on constricting religious freedom?

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Allies working at us behest

Our dapper External Affairs Minister got his spokesman to dismiss a US Govt report on religious minorities in India as ‘vote-bank politics in international relations’. US allies in Gulf are giving a reply. Jairam Ramesh, Former Union Minister

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Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh set speculation rolling when he said, “Our dapper External Affairs Minister got his spokesman to dismiss a US government report on religious minorities in India as ‘vote-bank politics in international relations’. US allies in Gulf are giving a reply.”

The timeline of events would seem to suggest that. Suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma made the remarks on May 26 and on June 1 expelled BJP leader Navin Kumar Jindal more or less tweeted what Nupur had said. There was some Twitter backlash at the domestic level but the matter lay dormant at the international level.

On June 2, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken released the international religious freedom report which noted that under the BJP government, Hindu-nationalist groups have enforced sectarian policies that pose a grave danger to India’s religious minorities. Blinken also commented that in India “we’ve seen rising attacks on people and places of worship”.

MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi countered the next day by accusing Washington of practising “vote bank politics in international relations” and cited “issues of concern” in the US such as racially and ethnically motivated attacks and gun violence.

The storm on Twitter against Jindal’s tweet broke within a day of the MEA’s riposte starting with Oman’s Grand Mufti issuing an angry statement that snowballed into a pan-West Asian outrage. But there is some scepticism too.

Meanwhile, Asaduddin Owaisi, AIMIN chief, said, “India has lost face. The country’s foreign policy has been destroyed. The fringe has become mainstream…I demand (Nupur Sharma’s) arrest, not just suspension.”