‘Got the chair, kept mouth shut’: Mehbooba Mufti on PM Modi's BRICS speech

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi missed an opportunity at the BRICS summit to reiterate India's historic role as a champion of global human rights.

"The way our prime minister, as the chair of BRICS and as a host, should have spoken, the intensity with which he should have spoken, I feel he shied away. He chose his words very very cautiously," she told reporters here.

India, she noted, is recognised throughout the world for championing human rights, for humanity and democracy.

An “independent foreign policy”

"It (India) has always taken pride in having an independent foreign policy, non-alignment, since Jawaharlal Nehru's time. However, we didn't say anything from our side about Gaza where 20,000-22,000 innocent children were martyred. After that the leadership in Iran was martyred, some 150 school girls were killed inside a school. There was no word from our side," the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir said.

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Mehbooba said India lagged in taking the lead the BRICS summit. “We got the chair but our mouth was shut.”

India has had an independent foreign policy and New Delhi has never been a "sidekick" even to a superpower like America, she said.

"Unfortunately, for the last many years our foreign policy is completely changing, we are being selective in condemning terrorist attacks," she said.

Terrorism and a multipolar world order

Mehbooba welcomed the Delhi Declaration of the BRICS summit in which the Pahalgam attack was condemned and a strong statement was made on the happenings in West Asia.

"The BRICS was such a platform where our country, our prime minister should have spoken forcefully about it, rather he should have initiated the declaration, he should have been on the forefront. Somewhere we have lacked, somewhere we are compromising many of our values, our country's principles," she said.

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The PDP president said while the world is loving towards a multi-polar world order, New Delhi is still stuck in the superpower syndrome.

"The world is moving towards multi-superpowers now, China is there, Russia is there and America is going down as a superpower. We have seen what happened to them in Iran, they are trying to save their skin like anything," she said.