When S Jaishankar took on a billionaire

"I think old habits die hard." After Smriti Irani, it was S Jaishankar who took on Modi critic and billionaire, George Soros.

Transcript

00:00Narendra Modi is no democrat.

00:04He is old, rich, opinionated and dangerous.

00:07The democratically elected Narendra Modi created a Hindu nationalist state.

00:36The world is changing, it is rebalancing, it is less Euro-Atlantic.

00:54I don't think everybody gets that.

00:58I think old habits die hard.

01:00There are still people in the world who believe that their definition, their preferences, their views must override everything else.

01:12By the way, a few years ago, in the same conference I was there at that time,

01:17he actually accused us of planning to strip millions of Muslims of their citizenship.

01:24Which of course didn't happen. It was a ridiculous suggestion.

01:27But you have to understand what this actually means.

01:31I could take a view that the individual in question, Mr Soros, is an old, rich, opinionated person

01:43sitting in New York who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works.

01:51Now, if I could only stop at old, rich and opinionated, I would put it away.

01:57But he is old, rich, opinionated and dangerous.

02:01You know, because what happens is when such people and such views and such organisations,

02:09they actually invest resources in shaping narratives.

02:13You know, I spoke about globalisation.

02:17Now, what globalisation does is, it actually creates lot of, the seamlessness of globalisation,

02:24which creates all the opportunities, also allows, you know, narratives to be shaped,

02:31money to come in, you know, foundations to go about their agenda.

02:38Now, in this particular case, I mean, it is very clear that he has very strong political preferences.

02:45He actually thinks that, I mean, doesn't matter that this is a country of 1.4 billion people,

02:52we are almost there, whose voters decide how the country should run.

02:59He actually thinks, well, if, you know, and again, I cite him as an extreme example.

03:07Okay? But it's, it's, there are other, you know, manifestations of this in different countries

03:14where people like him think an election is good if the person we want to see wins.

03:22If the election throws up a different outcome, then we actually will say it's a flawed democracy.

03:31And the beauty is, all this is done under the pretense of advocacy of open, open society of transparency, etc.

03:40So, our generation, we have grown up with concepts like regime change, which influence operations.

03:49Now, you can call it what you will. I mean, to me, this really looks the same with a gloss of some kind of do-goodism on it.

04:00So, for me, it's actually necessary today that you have, we have today a serious conversation on democracy.

04:11When I look at my own democracy, I mean, I have today a voter turnout which is unprecedented,

04:19electoral outcomes which are decisive, electoral processes which are not questioned.

04:26We are not one of those countries where after the election somebody goes to arbitrate in court. Okay?

04:32We don't have any hanging chads either. And, you know, where you actually say,

04:40I will sit in judgment over the verdict of voters. Now, my sense of democracy is the voters are supposed to decide.

04:49And it worries us. It worries us because, look, we are a country which went through colonialism.

04:57We know the dangers of what happens when there is outside interference in whatever guys, in your politics.

05:05If you do this kind of scare mongering, like millions of people will be deprived of citizenship,

05:11it actually does real damage to a societal fabric. Because somebody out there believes you.

05:17And somebody, and you don't leave it to accident, by the way, you back it up with an operation.

05:22So, you create that kind of fear psychosis and then you use that to validate your original judgment.