India has ‘bad neighbours’, will defend itself against terrorism: Jaishankar

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, in a stern message to Pakistan, said on Friday (January 2) that India has the right to defend its people from terrorism and will exercise that right when it sees fit, adding that nobody can tell the country what it should and should not do.

Speaking at an event in IIT Madras, Jaishankar, without directly mentioning Pakistan, said that India has “bad neighbours,” adding that if a country decides that it will deliberately resort to terrorism, India has the right to defend its people.

"You can also have bad neighbours. Unfortunately, we do. 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. 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,” said Jaishankar as quoted by ANI.

On terrorism and suspension of Indus Waters Treaty

“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 added in reference to India’s suspension of the Indus Water Treaty following the Pahalgam terror attack.

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As for the foreign policy situation in the international arena, Jaishankar said that when it comes to foreign policy most countries today are engaged in de-risking.

Foreign policy dominated by ‘de-risking’

“If you ask me today what most countries are doing in foreign policy, they are de-risking. They are de-risking their economy, politics, dealings with everybody, sometimes their internal narratives... This is a country which got its 3G from outside, 4G from outside, but when it came to 5G, we realised the risks of 5G, reliance on 5G from an external provider is so huge that we should make an effort. I'm really very happy that the defence sector today has opened up so much more to innovation and to private enterprise and to creativity..." said Jaishankar.

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"If you look at technology, supply chains, economic policies, climate events, pandemics. Just think of the last five years. People said, you can have wars, but in this day and age, you can't have long wars; nobody can afford it. There's a long war going on right now, which is into its fourth year... People said some regions will never change. Look at the Middle East and see how much it has changed,” he added.

The External Affairs Minister further stated “We said we are so interdependent, nobody's going to really mess around with trade because we have too much locked into trade. Nobody's going to take the risk. Guess what? Somebody took a big risk....”