New Delhi: India endured Pakistan’s “longest-standing” illegal occupation of a part of Jammu and Kashmir since 1948 and the “invasion” was made a “dispute”, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Tuesday, highlighting the West’s selective application of global rules.
In an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue, Jaishankar said global rules on issues pertaining to sovereignty and territorial integrity were never applied uniformly as he talked about flaws in the existing world order.
The External Affairs Minister made the remarks at the session with the theme of ‘Thrones and Thorns: Defending the Integrity of Nations’ that focused on the working of the UN.
Arguing that there have been instances of unequal application of global rules since the end of World War II, Jaishankar cited Pakistan’s “illegal occupation of a part of Jammu and Kashmir” and said the “attacker and the victim were put on par”.
“After the second World War, the longest standing illegal…presence, occupation of a territory by another country pertains to India… what we saw in Kashmir,” he said.
“We went to the UN. What was an invasion was made into a dispute. So the attacker and the victim were put on par. Who were the culpable parties? The UK, Canada, Belgium, Australia, the US. So, pardon me, I have some question marks on that old order,” Jaishankar said.
In his comments, Jaishankar batted for establishing a “strong and fair” United Nations and said global norms and rules must be applied uniformly.
“We need a strong UN but a strong UN requires a fair UN,” he said.
“A strong global order must have some basic consistency of standards,” he added.
The minister also called for the review of the existing world order.
“I think it’s important to audit the working of the world for the last eight decades and be honest about it and to understand today that the balances, the share holdings in the world have changed,” he said.
“We need a different conversation. We frankly need a different order,” he added.
Jaishankar suggested that the absence of a world order wouldn’t benefit only big countries.
“I would argue that any country which will take risks, which will have extreme positions, which would test the system will actually use disorder to its advantage,” he said.
The External Affairs minister again cited Pakistan. “We have seen in our own neighbourhood, you don’t have to be a big country to be a risky country. I have some smaller neighbours who have done a pretty good job of that.”
He also talked about different standards adopted by Western countries in their negotiations with the Taliban in different periods.
Jaishankar said any new global order must be based on the understanding that balances and shareholdings in the world have changed.
When the West goes out into other countries, it’s apparently in perseverance of democratic freedoms. When other countries come into the West, it seems to have a very malign intention, he said.
Jaishankar said India’s stand on the world order is shaped by its role in the Global South, its democratic polity, market economy and respect for faiths, and its past record in navigating and adapting to a world which has not always been “kind to us”, he said.
