By Ritika: Interacting with the Indian community in Thailand, External Affairs Minister (EAM) Dr S Jaishankar said, according to him, the best diplomat of all times is Lord Hanuman. The foreign minister explained how Lord Hanuman went to a country about which he didn’t have much information, located Sita, set the place on fire and kept her morale high.
“Mahabharata is like statecraft, but if you see Ramayana too if you ask me who I think is the best diplomat, my answer will be no question, Lord Hanuman. You are setting out on behalf of Lord Rama, but let us take that as a country, into the unknown dealing with another entity where you don’t have that much information…You have to go there, find intelligence, locate Sita…he surreptitiously sets contact with Sita, keeps her morale high, sets the place on fire which is not my prescription for diplomats…but if you look at the totality, he comes back successfully,” EAM Jaishankar said.
Jaishankar is in the Indonesian capital to attend a meeting of the Asean-India Foreign Ministers. He began his week-long visit to Indonesia and Thailand beginning Wednesday for meetings, including with counterparts of the Asean and BIMSTEC groupings.
‘EXTRAORDINARY THING ABOUT PM IS…’
Jaishankar also heaped praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and called him “enormously visionary and grounded”. “The extraordinary thing about PM Modi is that he gets the pulse of so many things which he turns into policies and programmes,” Jaishankar said.
“I feel it’s been an enormous good fortune of the country to have someone like him (PM Narendra Modi) at this time. I am not saying this because he is the PM and I am a member of his cabinet…He is enormously visionary and grounded and honestly such people come once in a lifetime,” he said, as quoted by news agency ANI.
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“For us (India), this is not just a relation but a relation that is associated with reform and change in India…When PM Modi took charge as the PM the look east policy became an act and it wasn’t only a terminology. After 2014 our connectivity, defence & security relations, economic engagement and our community have grown,” he added.
The Ministry of External Affairs in a statement said, “India’s engagement with this Asean centred regional architecture signifies India’s strong commitment to Asean centrality in the Indo-Pacific.”
After Jakarta, Jaishankar will travel to Bangkok to participate in the 12th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) Mechanism on Sunday.
(With agency inputs)
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