The External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar Saturday trashed the V-Dem’s and the Freedom House’s report.
He said, “You have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval, is not willing to play the game they want it to play.”
“So, they invent their rules, their parameters, pass the judgments and make out as though it is some kind of global exercise,” he further added.
Sweden based V-Dem and US based Freedom House has questioned the quality of Indian democracy in their recently published reports.
Freedom House’s report downgraded Bharat from “free” to “partly free”. Similarly, V-Dem’s Democracy Report downgraded Bharat from “world’s largest democracy” to “electoral autocracy”.
Dr Jaishankar lamented the fact that Nationalism is portrayed as some kind of crime.
The Minister said, “We are the nationalist guys. We have given vaccines to 70 countries in the world… Tell me about internationalist countries, how many vaccines have they given?”
Talking about religious tolerance in the country, he said that everyone was free to practice her beliefs in India. He said, “I don’t put my hand on a religious book when I take the oath of my office. Guess which country does?”
The American president takes the oath of office putting his hand on a copy of the Bible.
The Minister was speaking in India Today Conclave.
Referring to the recent controversy in the US Presidential elections, he said, “…nobody questions the elections in India but the same can’t be said about these countries.”
After he had lost the poll to Democratic candidate Joe Biden, then US President Donal Trump had disputed the result of the Presidential election for many days. Eventually, he demitted the office.
