Face of Nation: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar questioned the bids to “hyphenate” India with Pakistan following the scrapping of Article 370, on Monday and said that it is being done by those who are obsessed with the post-August 5 developments in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Foreign Minister was responding to a query about India and Pakistan being “hyphenated” once again following the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s temporary special status after the revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India.
“You are really being very semantic about it. How do you hyphenate a country, which is one-eighth of your economic size… which is reputationally your exact opposite?” Mr Jaishankar told a group of Indian reporters, virtually taking exceptions to India and Pakistan being talked of in the same breath.
He said that with this logic, India should not do anything which would bring Pakistan into the conversation at all. “So, let’s not talk Afghanistan. In fact, let’s not talk about South Asia. So, my sense is people are over-obsessed about it,” he said.
“Often the argumentation comes from people who have a viewpoint that we shouldn’t have done anything about (Article) 370,” Mr Jaishankar said, adding that he has a “very little tolerance” for that.
