Ram Madhav lauds Modi’s foreign policy

Hyderabad: Stating that the country had a ‘romantic’ approach in terms of foreign policy right from Nehru’s regime, BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav on Sunday said that India was now more pragmatic in its foreign policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP leader was delivering a talk on ‘Look East, Act East, What Next?’ organised by Awareness in Action, a social organisation here at Satya Sai Nigamagamam on Sunday.

Ram Madhav said, “Our thinking was more ‘romantic’ than pragmatic. We did not have a strategic vision during the early independence times.

We believed in certain romantic ideas and gave slogans like ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’, Non-Alignment movement. These slogans are attractive but it should not be mistaken for policies.”

Referring to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s comments in a lighter note, Ram Madhav said that if a Pakistan PM can dream of Kashmir becoming part of Pakistan, our external affairs minister is enough to give an answer to his dream.

He said that India had only one outstanding issue with Pakistan and that was to take back Pakistan occupied Kashmir. He said that not only the territory, but the people of Kashmir also are Indians.

He targeted a section of the media for glorifying terrorist Burhan Wani. He said that Wani had 14 criminal cases against him including eight cases of attacks on army and police jawans, six cases of violent protests challenging sovereignty of India. “You can’t expect jawans to check the bio data of a person involved in encounter and had Rs 10 lakh reward on him.

The country has to stand by the security forces and not by the terrorists,” he said. He said India joining the non-alignment movement served no purpose when India had problems with China. “India did not join any of the two power blocks and remained to be in third block.

First power block did not come to our rescue because we were not part of their group and second power block did not respond because we were not involved in that group too and finally the third block also did not come to the rescue because both the power blocks did nothing,” said Ram Madhav.

He said that the creation of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) was yet another classical example of romanticism.He said that the biggest achievement for India was 1971 war in which Bangladesh was created. During that time we proved religion cannot be a basis of creating a country,” he said.

However, he said that India suffered biggest diplomatic defeat in 1973 when it returned 95,000 Pakistani army personnel without any condition. “You had the opportunity to free PoK, but this was not done and the present day problem in Kashmir is because of that mistake,” he said.

The BJP leader said that the new government had now developed a new thinking. He listed out government’s initiatives for better relations with foreign countries stating prime minister’s initiatives like Panchamrut (ensuring dignity of Indians), Samvad (extended engagement with small countries) and Sanskriti (having cultural bonding).

Ram Madhav said that India should protect each and every island (its territory) in the Indian Ocean. Earlier, because of lacking of pragmatic approach, Indian Ocean area was treated as Asia Pacific region but in future it would be India Pacific region.
He said that the country was going to have an Act East policy which includes laying of road from Assam to Singapore.