Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: While his dwindling supporters are gloating over his 45-minute speech in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday—wherein he claimed the Narendra Modi Government had ‘united’ China and Pakistan against India, little would Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have realized that his outrageous claims would be junked in the country and overseas within 24 hours.
Nobody from the Treasury Benches protested against his recycled rants. Outside the House, however, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi remarked Gandhi was “confused, ignorant”.
After the ongoing 11-day-long debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, they expected Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tear apart Gandhi’s claims.
The Wayanad MP, also a former Congress President, while criticizing the NDA government over a range of issues, had routinely blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for following a flawed policy, both domestic and international, that has led to the creation of “two Indias”.
“The Chinese have a very clear vision of what they want to do. The single biggest strategic goal of India’s foreign policy has been to keep Pakistan and China separate…What you have done is, you have brought them together. Do not underestimate the force that is standing in front of you. This is the single biggest crime that you could commit against the people of India,” Gandhi thundered in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
“Ask yourself why you are not able to get a guest on Republic Day. We are completely isolated and surrounded,” he claimed, ignoring the fact that the Heads of the State from five Central Asian countries, invited as guests on January 26, could not come because of the fresh outbreak of the Covid-19’s Omicron variant.
Ironically, Gandhi conveniently overlooked his own ‘secret’ meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to New Delhi in the middle of the Doklam crisis in 2017. After flip-flops, his party had to admit the controversial visit. He also forgot to say how his own ‘statements’ on Kashmir and surgical strikes were used by Pakistan in the United Nations against India.
That his latest claims would attract swift rebuttal was certain.
America was the first to react.
The US “wouldn’t endorse” Gandhi’s comment in parliament on India’s foreign policy, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Thursday when asked over the Islamabad-Beijing axis in the context of the Congress leader’s statement.
“I will leave it to the Pakistanis and the People’s Republic of China to speak about their relationship. I certainly would not – would not endorse those remarks,” he said.
Even diplomats who had worked with the Congress governments rebutted Gandhi’s wild claims.
India’s former Ambassador to Islamabad and ex-External Affairs Minister Kunwar Natwar Singh, who had worked closely with then Congress Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao, and Dr. Manmohan Singh, said: “I’m surprised that nobody from the government’s side got up to remind Rahul Gandhi that what he has said is not completely accurate. China and Pakistan have been close allies since the 1960s. It started in his great grandfather’s time, who took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations,” the media quoted Singh as saying, referring to the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Former diplomat Kanwal Sibal, who is the elder brother of senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, too, said that the China-Pakistan alliance began ‘well before’ the BJP came to power in India. “After the 1962 conflict, China-Pakistan saw an opportunity to strengthen their relations. Everyone is aware that the two have illegally collaborated in the nuclear sector,” he remarked.
Kanwal Sibal, who retired as Foreign Secretary in 2002, had also served as a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board (2008-10).
Later, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took to Twitter to offer the Congress leader some “lessons” in history. “Rahul Gandhi alleged in Lok Sabha that it is this government which brought Pakistan and China together. Perhaps, some history lessons are in order: In 1963, Pakistan illegally handed over the Shaksgam valley to China. China built the Karakoram highway through PoK in the 1970s.”
“From the 1970s, the two countries also had close nuclear collaboration: In 2013, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor started. So, ask yourself: were China and Pakistan distant then?”