New Delhi: As Lok Sabha took the situation in Ukraine up for discussion on Tuesday, Congress leader Manish Tewari said ministers making students evacuated from war-torn Ukraine chant slogans in favour of the government was a "self-defeating spectacle." He also criticised the government, saying he had never seen such "self-congratulatory ecstasy" as displayed during the evacuations.
India has a long history of conducting such evacuations and it has conducted 23 such evacuations since 1962-63, including from Burma, Kuwait, Lebanon and Libya, Tewari said as he lauded the way students were brought back from the European nation. "But I regret to say that I have never seen the kind of chest-thumping and the kind of self-congratulatory ecstasy that was at display during the recent evacuations. Making young students chant slogans in favour of the government in aeroplanes by ministers of the government of India, I think it was a self-defeating spectacle," he said.
Suggesting that the Nehruvian principles of non-alignment had held India in good stead between 1946-1991, the Congress leader said they are worth going back to. "I would like to recommend to the government that strategic autonomy, the Nehruvian principles of non-alignment that held us in good stead are worth going back to. Those principles have stood the test of time," he said. "I know friends from that side of the House leave no stone unturned and with every breathe to try and criticise the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru," he added.
"But the fact remains that those principles that were enunciated then, possibly have stood the test of time and the crisis in Ukraine and the position that the government of India has taken, possibly bears the most eloquent testimony to those principles which were articulated at the founding of our Republic," he said. Tewari also mentioned that Ukraine should have been sensitive to Russian concerns and the eastward expansion of NATO.
"Ukraine should have been a little more careful and circumspect...We may not really have the option to sit atop this iron curtain," he said on India's role in the crisis. Speaking on the issue, RSP leader NK Premchandaran, while appreciating the government's efforts to evacuate students from Ukraine, said that there was a "strategic flaw" in the plan to bring them home. He said that priority should have been given to evacuating students from regions where more Russian attacks were underway like Kyiv and Sumi. This could have saved them from suffering, Premchandaran said.
The MP also said that there seems to be an impression of India being a supporter of Russia, the aggressor, which needs to be clarified by the government. "India's statement at the UN lacked the condemnation of Russian aggression. This has to be made clear... the political stand of India on this," Premchandaran said. Hitting back at Opposition leaders' charge of the government taking credit for the evacuation of Indians, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government took steps for the welfare of the people and the country, and adverse comments like these should not have been made.
When the evacuation operation was on, comments were made here which should not have been made as there is a time for doing politics, he said intervening in the discussion. "The government was not working to take credit. It is our responsibility and the prime minister sent ministers as the scale of the operation was big...if we send a joint secretary, a response there would also be from a joint secretary, that is the set protocol. When ministers go, the response is at that level," said Rijiju, who was one of the special envoys sent to countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation of Indians from the war-torn nation.
He said Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger told him that no government had made as much efforts as the Indian government to help its citizens in Ukraine. Heger also stated that this is a big conflict and the Indian prime minister has a big stature and he can make a massive contribution to stopping this war, Rijiju said. He lauded the work of the Ministry of External Affairs headed by S Jaishankar for its relentless efforts in the evacuation of Indians.
Participating in the discussion, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah said the Ukraine-Russia conflict was a failure to the United Nations and the world body continues to fail this world. "I would like to thank not only the prime minister of India but all those ministers whom he chose to go to that war-torn country to bring our children back and I must say at the cost of their own safety, they undertook this journey and brought those children back. I congratulate you and I congratulate the prime minister for this bold step," he said.
He said Russia felt threatened and had told Ukraine to be neutral, but they still chose NATO. Abdullah urged the government to take major steps in de-escalating the war. "We have friends in the US and friends in Russia and that is one of the biggest things we have achieved from Nehru's time. It was Nehru's foreign policy of keeping neutral wwith friends from all sides so that we can take this country from poverty to the developed country," he said. "I would say to the foreign minister, please move faster so that people can say Gandhi's nation has saved this world," Abdullah said. NCP Supriya Sule also lauded India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's foreign policy.
