NEW DELHI, May 4 ― India is not xenophobic, the nation’s international minister has insisted, after feedback by US President Joe Biden suggesting the South Asian nation and fellow ally Japan have been struggling economically as a result of they rejected immigrants.
Biden, who’s searching for reelection in opposition to Republican rival Donald Trump in November, made the remarks at a marketing campaign fundraising occasion in Washington this week.
Foreign minister S. Jaishankar instructed a media roundtable yesterday that Biden’s feedback did not match India’s actuality.
“First of all, our financial system is not faltering,” he stated, in keeping with a report of the dialogue revealed right this moment by the Economic Times newspaper.
“India has been a really distinctive nation,” he added. “I’d say truly, within the historical past of the world, that it’s been a society which has been very open… completely different folks of various societies come to India.”
India is likely one of the world’s fastest-growing economies with annualised GDP progress of 8.4 per cent within the December quarter, in keeping with official information in February.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist authorities has been accused by critics of discriminating in opposition to Muslims, together with by not too long ago enacted reforms to India’s citizenship regulation.
The amended regulation sparked large protests when it was first handed by parliament in 2019 and eventually enacted in March, with Amnesty International warning that it nonetheless risked getting used as a device, alongside a mooted National Register of Citizens, to deprive some Muslims of citizenship.
“There are individuals who publicly stated on file that… 1,000,000 Muslims will lose their citizenship on this nation,” Jaishankar stated.
“Why are they not being held to account? Because no one has misplaced citizenship.”
File picture of US President Joe Biden waving as he walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on May 3, 2024, in Washington, DC. Biden is travelling to Wilmington for the weekend. ― eNM pic
‘Unfortunate’
Biden had clubbed allies India and Japan in with rivals China and Russia in remarks supposed as a defence of US immigration coverage.
“Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan in hassle? Why is Russia in hassle? And India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t need immigrants,” Biden had stated on the Wednesday fundraiser.
Tokyo responded right this moment by saying it was “unlucky that feedback not primarily based on an correct understanding of Japan’s coverage have been made”.
Since taking workplace in 2021, Biden has strengthened ties with US allies in Asia, specifically India and Japan.
He has hosted state dinners on the White House for each Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The White House has since needed to downplay Biden’s remarks.
The president was merely attempting to ship a broader message that “the United States is a nation of immigrants,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby instructed reporters. ― eNM
