Jaishankar defends new citizenship law

External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar yesterday defended his country’s controversial new citizenship law and crackdown in Jammu and Kashmir, as he came to Brussels to promote what he hopes will be closer strategic ties to the Europe Union.
Delhi’s top diplomat was the guest of honour as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels with an eye to renewing relations and boosting trade with India.
EU president Ursula von der Leyen’s new Commission wants to give Brussels a more “geopolitical role” and as part of that hopes to host a March summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“India and the European Union share a lot of things,” said Europe’s high representative for foreign policy Josep Borrell, citing climate change, the digital revolution and rise of China as shared challenges.
Jaishankar, standing by Borrell, noted that the new government in India and the new commission in Brussels are “both quite fresh” and that they hoped to take relations to a “new level”.
He said he hoped the lunch talks would confirm the “strategic partnership.”
Taken together, the EU member states are Delhi’s biggest trade partner, with India’s imports and exports to and from the bloc each representing about €45bn a year ($49 bn).
But - while Europe has inked trade deals with big Asian players Japan, Vietnam and Singapore - the pair have no formal agreement, and India approaches such agreements carefully.
“You don’t necessarily need trade deals to do trade,” Jaishankar told AFP, stressing that India’s economy is driven by domestic demand.
“Trade deals are useful, I mean I’m not at all denying that, but I think they are not necessarily as compelling as sometimes all of us tend to tend to think.”
European business wants to win more access to markets in a country with 1.3bn people, and Jaishankar was clear that Delhi would like closer co-operation with Europe on security and strategic policy.
But some in Europe are worried about what they see as India’s populist shift under Modi’s government.
Lawmakers in the European Parliament have drafted a resolution condemning India’s Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 as “discriminatory in nature and dangerously divisive.”
But the non-binding resolution has yet to be passed and Jaishankar insisted the law had been misunderstood.
The CAA laws eases citizenship rules for religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Protests have erupted in India, and concerns have been raised abroad, led by those who fear the government is discriminating against Muslims and putting secularism in danger.
But Jaishankar said Delhi’s critics have misunderstood the government’s policy and been taken in by the politics of a “very passionate” democratic society.
He compared the CAA rules to immigration and refugee resettlement policies across Europe, pointing out that many EU countries also use national or cultural criteria.
“They created pathways to naturalisation to citizenship,” he said, citing among others Germany’s rule allowing ethnic Germans from eastern Europe to seek citizenship.
“Now, they did it with a context and they did it with a criteria. I mean, no European country said: ‘Anybody anytime, anywhere in the world can come because they feel it’s nice to live in Europe’.”
He said India’s new law would reduce statelessness, and pointed to the fierce debates that Europe has also had around immigrations and the “political changes” these have caused.
Modi’s government also raised eyebrows in Brussels when it stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its partial autonomy and imposed a security crackdown in its only Muslim-majority region.