That’s perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, Jaishankar seems to think of this as revenge against the Americans. He shouldn’t. Commentary from abroad should never be regarded as a threat to sovereignty in a mature democracy; India has the right to comment on the US regardless of whether the South Block thinks that there has been some provocation previously, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, the human rights and religious freedom are weaponised by the US while the US itself does not, in fact, tolerate 'fact finding' missions and questionings undertaken by others.
The US hosts the world's largest incarcerated population (disproportionately black), high crime rate, police brutality, systemic entrenched racism, corporate lobbying for favourable corporate taxations including the world's largest tax havens, etc etc while it disproportionately looks outwards towards countries.. especially India. THe US neither wants India to fail, but definitely does not want to succeed beyond a threshold - keeping India in a goldilocks range.
Jaishankar's was not 'revenge' - it would be childish to think so.
It is just pushback and getting a firmer grip against the US's weaponised human rights' as an issue. Two can speak the language - that is all.
India had never interfered... nay, even commented in the internal affairs of the US. THis might soon change. We might be seeing 'Black lives matter' posters on the Indian Embassy, spokespersons talking about Gun control and gun violence in schools, right of women to safe abortion, rights of LGBTQI+ etc.
THis might soon change. We might be seeing 'Black lives matter' posters on the Indian Embassy, spokespersons talking about Gun control and gun violence in schools, right of women to safe abortion, rights of LGBTQI+ etc.
Join the club.
During the BLM protests in 2020, diplomats from many foreign countries openly participated in the marches.
European diplomats have been commenting on the state of abortion access in the U.S. for decades.
Europeans have been talking about gun control and gun violence in the U.S. for decades.
But don't think for an instance that India can comment on the state of LGBTQ rights in the U.S. with any sort of authority when my cousin can't walk down the streets of Delhi without fearing for her life.
This is peak "whataboutism" and false-equivalences.
All of the problems you've mentioned have some element of truth to them, but are also grossly exaggerated either by the activists working to address them (you have to make the problem sound really bad and really urgent to get attention) or by people just looking to attack the US or a specific politician, party, etc.
I don't think they're exaggerated. They're awful problems, and much reform is needed. However, I don't doubt that it's used to attack particular politicians, but the US isn't a "shining city upon a hill" providing the great example for all other countries to emulate. We have our own significant problems, and so long as we have them our moral grandstanding loses some of it's effect internationally.
> Commentary from abroad should never be regarded as a threat to sovereignty in a mature democracy
Unless it is from the US or europe that uses "human rights" as justification for war and toppling governments. You'll notice every country we want to attack ( india, china, russia, venezuela, cuba, iran, myanmar, libya, syria, etc ), we've always bring up "human rights".
> India has the right to comment on the US regardless of whether the South Block thinks that there has been some provocation previously, and vice versa.
Sure, but india is too weak to be a threat to the US. Their accusations of human rights violations are merely an annoyance. But when the US accuses india of human rights, india knows there will be US funded attacks, riots, sanctions, etc to destabilize and overthrow the indian government.
India is just lashing out in anticipation of pressure from the US. Of course we don't care about human rights. Never have and never will. Otherwise, we'd be liberating the aborigines in australia or maori in new zealand or the inuits in alaska who are currently undergoing actual genocide. The only question is how badly we are going to punish india to get them to obey our orders concerning russia. We are putting a lot of pressure on china and india to abandon russia. Which one will be the first to crack? Only time will tell.
