While the US election campaign is entering perhaps the last phase of high-pitch political banter and battle, India’s external minister, S. Jaishankar, opted out.
Once in an event, someone posed the question in this form: “In general, what are your thoughts about the US elections, and how is India ready for it?”
Jaishankar said: “Well, yes, we normally don’t get to comment on other nations’ elections because we also do not expect others to comment on our votes.”
Notably, in the run-up to General Election 2024 in India, there has been quite a fair amount of bitter commentary between the US state department and India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
At the end of March this year, when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was being arrested and the Congress was accusing the tax authorities of freezing some of its accounts, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller stated, “We remain attentive to these actions. We reiterate our call for legitimate, accountable, and efficient legal procedures on all of these matters.”
MEA had responded in equally strong tones, stating, ‘In diplomacy, states are supposed to be sensitive to the sovereignty and affairs of another state, especially when the other state is a democracy. If not, there is a tendency that one could set problematic precedents’.
The US had entered the debate with its remarks soon after Germany’s foreign ministry chimed into the matter, which in turn led to the MEA swiftly warning a German envoy in Delhi against his government’s remarks on the arrest.
India had also protested to a US government body, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, for meddling in India’s electoral business by recommending India should again be tagged a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ for a fifth year in a row in their yearly report.
