Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said it is important to communicate with other countries to avoid a situation where India’s intentions are misread.
Participating in a fireside chat with students here at IIT Madras, Jaishankar said, “How to prevent people from misreading you is to communicate. If you communicate well, clearly and honestly, other countries and other people respect it and accept it.” “A lot of people across the world are proud of their culture, tradition and heritage. I see no reason why we should not be. There are really very few ancient civilizations which have survived to become major modern nation-states, and we are one of them. We have a sense of our past which very few countries have… It was our decision to opt for a democratic political model, which made the very idea of democracy as a universal political concept.
“Had we not gone that way, the democratic model, as we know it, would have been regional and narrow… Partnership with the West is also important, and that is how we shape the world,” he said.
Jaishankar said countries have advanced by growing at home and then engaging abroad, leveraging the international environment in a way that contributes to it and gains from it.
“When we say ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’, the term is we have never considered the world as an inimical or hostile place from which we have to defensively protect ourselves. We have limitations on our resources. With limited resources, how do you have maximum impact? That is actually the problem that has to be solved.
“What we try to do in Indian Foreign Policy and diplomacy today is solve that problem. We try to do that partly using our competitiveness and strengths and leveraging other institutions and possibilities,” he added.