External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has criticised mainstream American media, including the Washington Post, for its “biased” coverage of India.
“I look at the media. There are some newspapers, you know exactly what they are going to write, including one in this town,” he said while addressing a gathering of Indian-Americans in Washington on Sunday.
The remarks come two days after the New York Times pointed out how the Narendra Modi government has been “stifling dissent, sidelining civilian institutions and making minorities second-class citizens”.
“My point is there are biases, there are efforts really, to determine…look, the more India goes its way and the people who believe that they were the custodians and the shapers of India lose ground in India the more actually, some of these debaters are gonna come outside,” he said while commenting on an alleged increase in “anti-Indian forces”.
While speaking about Kashmir, Jaishankar said, “If there are Indian soldiers or Indian policemen who are abducted; If there are people working for the government, or citizens going about their business, who will lose their lives?...There is a big song and dance about the internet being cut. Now, if you've reached the stage where you say an internet cut is more dangerous than the loss of human lives, then what can I say?"
This comes months after a report by the US state department on “human rights practices” across 198 countries and territories – India included. India was flagged as having “significant human rights issues” spanning multiple fields.
Jaishankar used the tit-for-tat approach in addressing the contents of the report, telling reporters in Washington: “Look, people are entitled to have views about us. But we are also equally entitled to have views about their views and about the interests, and the lobbies and the vote banks which drive that.”
Last year, the minister told Indian diplomats to "counter the 'one-sided' narrative on international media" that Narendra Modi's government had "failed the country by their 'incompetent' handling of the second Covid wave".
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