No country in the world welcomes everyone as citizens, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, hitting out at those criticising India on the new citizenship law.
He also slammed the United Nations Human Rights Council forexpressing concern over the situation in Kashmir, saying its position on theissue was wrong in the past as well.
“We have tried toreduce the number of stateless people through this legislation. That should beappreciated,” he said at the ET Global Business Summit when asked aboutthe growing criticism of India over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
In an unprecedented move, the United Nations HighCommissioner for Human Rights approached the Supreme Court against the newcitizenship law earlier this week.
Asked if India was losing its friends over the CAA,Jaishankar said, “Maybe we are getting to know who our friends reallyare.”
He stoutly defended thelaw, saying every country follows certain social criterion to grantcitizenship, adding: “We have done it in a way that we do not create abigger problem for ourselves.”
“Everybody when they look at citizenship has a contextand has a criterion. Show me a country in the world which says everybody in theworld is welcome. Nobody does that. Look at America. Look at the Europeans. Ican give you example of every European country. There is some socialcriterion,” he noted.
Asked about criticism of India by the director of the UNrights on the Kashmir issue, Jaishankar said, “UNHRC director has beenwrong before. How carefully they (UNHRC) skirt around the cross-borderterrorism problem, as if it has nothing to do with country next door. Pleaseunderstand where they are coming from; look at UNHRC’s record how they handledthe issue earlier.”
He said it is a kind of geo-political assessment as therewas a time when India was very defensive, its capabilities were less, threatswere more and risks were higher.
“We adopted a policy of managing the world but kind ofstaying away. We can’t do that any more. We are the 5th largest economy of theworld and will be the third largest. We have to engage everybody and findsolutions,” he said.
“In a sense you would have geopolitical constituencyout there in the world. There will be people who understand the changes ofIndia, who agree with it, there are people who may not agree with it. I wouldnot mix the two. I would not mix apples and oranges. I think these are twodifferent processes at work. But, I will come out ahead at the end of it,”the external affairs minister said.
On opposition to the CAA and whether India has not been ableto convince the world enough, he said, “There are sections of the worldoutside of the media.”
He noted that he has engaged with governments and cited theexample when in Brussels, he had 27 foreign ministers in a room to whom he wastalking.
“The point we make on CAA is that it cannot beanybody’s case that a government or Parliament doesn’t have the right to setthe terms of naturalisation or citizenship. Every government does that, everyParliament does that.
“What we have tried to do is, we have a large number of stateless people. We have tried to reduce the large number of stateless people we have in this country through this legislation. That should be appreciated. We have done it in a way that we do not create a bigger problem for ourselves. Everybody when they look at citizenship have a context and has a criterion,” he said.