Jaishankar questions BBC documentary timing, slams Opposition over China crisis

Jaishankar also said his father K Subrahmanyam was removed as Union Secretary during Indira Gandhi's tenure in 1980

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday said that his father K Subrahmanyam had been removed from the post of Secretary (Defence Production) in the Union Government by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1980, possibly because he had been very upright.

Jaishankar said during an interview with the ANI news agency that his father had also been superseded during the term of Rajiv Gandhi as the prime minister and a bureaucrat junior to him had been appointed as cabinet secretary. He had also dismissed allegation by the Congress and the other opposition parties that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had failed to respond adequately to China’s bid to push the Line of Actual Control westward to encroach into the territory of India.

“Who sent the Indian Army to the LAC? Rahul Gandhi didn’t send them. Narendra Modi sent them,” he said.

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The diplomat-turned-politician also alleged that the recent BBC documentary on Modi’s role as the chief minister of Gujarat during the 2002 riots in Gujarat was a political hatchet job.

“We are not debating just a documentary or a speech that somebody gave in a European city or a newspaper edits somewhere – we are debating, actually politics, which is being conducted ostensibly as media -- there is a phrase 'war by other means' this is politics by another means – I mean you will do a hatchet job, you want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we decided after 20 years to put at this time," said the external affairs minister.

"I mean, come on, you think timing is accidental! Let me tell you one thing – I don't know if the election season has started in India, Delhi or not, but, for sure it has started in London, New York," he said. “I mean, do you doubt it? Look who the cheerleaders are. What is happening is, just like I told you – this drip, drip, drip – how do you shape a very extremist image of India, of the government, of the BJP, of the Prime Minister. I mean, this has been going on for a decade,” added Jaishankar, replying to a question on alleged bias of western media against the Modi Government.

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He questioned why documentaries were not being made on communal violence against the Sikhs in Delhi after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.

"In 1980, he (K Subrahmanya) was Secretary, Defence Production. In 1980 when Indira Gandhi was re-elected, he was the first Secretary that she removed. And he was the most knowledgeable person everybody would say on defence," said Jaishankar, adding his father was a very upright person and that had possibly caused the problem.

"But the fact was that as a person he saw his own career in bureaucracy, actually kind of stalled. And after that, he never became a Secretary again. He was superseded during the Rajiv Gandhi period for somebody junior to him who became a cabinet secretary. It was something he felt...we rarely spoke about it. So he was very, very proud when my elder brother became secretary," said Jaishankar.