"Bad Neighbours": External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar shreds Pakistan, Then A Stern Warning
"You can also have bad neighbours. Unfortunately, we do," said Dr Jaishankar in an interaction with students of IIT, Madras.
He said:
"When you have bad neighbours, if you look to the one to the west, if a country decides that it will deliberately, persistently, and unrepentantly continue with terrorism, we have a right to defend our people against terrorism.
"We will exercise that right," the Minister said.
In an apparent reference to Operation Sindoor, he said that "nobody can tell us what we should or should not do".
"How we exercise that right is up to us. Nobody can tell us what we should or should not do. We will do whatever we have to do to defend ourselves," he added.
The minister also spoke about the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of 1960 with Pakistan, which was suspended after the deadly Pahalgam attack.
"Many years ago, we agreed to a water-sharing arrangement, but if you had decades of terrorism, there is no good neighbourliness.
If there is no good neighbourliness, you don't get the benefits of that good neighbourliness. You can't say, "Please share water with me, but I will continue terrorism with you." That's not reconcilable," he said.
He said that India is blessed with "a lot of neighbours of various kinds".
"If you have a neighbour who is good to you or at least who is not harmful to you, your natural instinct is to be kind, to help that neighbour, and that's what we do as a country," he said.
The Minister mentioned about his recent visit to Bangladesh.
“If India grows, all of our neighbours can grow with us. They will have many more opportunities. That’s the message which I took to Bangladesh,” he said.
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