India's friendship with any nation not directed against a third, says PM Narendra Modi at UNGA

India’s gesture of friendship towards any country is not directed against any third country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday – sending out a subtle message to China.

“Any gesture of friendship by India towards one country is not against someone else,” the Prime Minister said in his virtual address to the UNGA, apparently in order to dispel the perception that India’s growing relations with the United States was aimed at containing China. His comment was also apparently intended to deny any move by India to move closer into the orbit of influence of the United States in the wake of the four-and-a-half-month-long stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in eastern Ladakh.

“India has always cared about the interests of the whole humankind and not about its own vested interests,” Modi said, adding, “This philosophy has always been the driving force of India's policies. One can see the glimpses of this philosophy in India’s Neighbourhood First Policy to our Act East Policy, in the thought of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), and in our approach towards the Indo Pacific region.”

He said that India’s partnerships with other nations were also guided by “this very principle”.

His comment came even as India joined Japan, Australia and the US to add a military heft to the ‘Quad’ – a four-nation coalition relaunched in November 2017 to counter expansionist moves of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Prime Minister, however, also underlined the distinction between the ways India and China supported development projects in other countries – albeit without directly referring to the communist country. “When India strengthens its development partnership, it is not with any malafide intent of making the partner country dependent or hapless. We have never hesitated from sharing experiences of our development,” he said.

Beijing has been bankrolling a large number of infrastructure projects in several countries in South Asia and Indian Ocean region as well as in Africa, as part of its Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), thus building strategic assets across the continents. But Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious cross-continental connectivity initiative also came under criticism from around the world – for exposing the smaller participating nations to the risks of being caught in debt-traps.

“When we were strong, we did not trouble the world; when we were weak, we did not become a burden on the world,” said the Prime Minister.