External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was praised by the Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan for his Bharat ‘not a bully’ remark.
EAM S Jaishankar was asked at an event last week whether Bharat was being perceived as a ‘big bully’ in the sub-continent and the Indian Ocean region.
S Jaishankar replied, ‘When you say Bharat is perceived as a big bully, you know, big bullies don’t provide USD 4.5 billion when the neighbors are in trouble’.
Mr Bachchan shared a video of Jaishankar’s viral response on X (formerly Twitter) and tweeted “Wah (wow).. well said Sir”.
WAH .. !!! well said Sir .. https://t.co/EE72lu0Ml5
— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) March 4, 2024
EAM’s answer came months after Maldives President Mohamad Muizzu in an apparent dig at Bharat, said that no country has the license to bully us.
“We may be small but this doesn’t give them the license to bully us,” he said in January amid a diplomatic row with Bharat.
“This (Indian) ocean does not belong to a specific country. This ocean also belongs to all countries situated in it,” said Muizzu, in an indirect jibe at New Delhi
‘Bharat’s trade, investments, and travel with its neighboring countries, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and even Maldives, have seen a sharp rise’, said S Jaishankar.
A conversation @anantaAspen on #WhyBharatMatters. https://t.co/cEKndMphjy
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) March 2, 2024
“Big bullies don’t supply vaccines to other countries when COVID-19 is on or make exceptions to their own rules to give response to food demands or fuel demands or fertilizer demands because some war in some other part of the world has tangled their lives,” S Jaishankar said at the book launch event on Saturday.
Jaishankar added, ‘Today at the connectivity, just the volume of people moving up and down, the volume of the trade which is there, the investments which are there, it’s a very, very good story to tell. Not just with Nepal and Bangladesh, but with Sri Lanka as well, I would say even with Maldives’.
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