‘Hanuman, Angad were…’ Jaishankar’s lessons from Ramayana for shaping India’s diplomacy

Jan 03, 2024

New Delhi, Jan 03 (ANI): External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar, in an exclusive interview with ANI Editor Smita Prakash, talked about his new book ‘Why Bharat Matters’. He referred to the lessons from Ramayana that work with Indian diplomacy. He said, “I think a mixture of all of them. The diplomat in me has the domain knowledge and the experience. The politician in me feels the need to communicate that to the everyday world. If there are two sagas or two stories all of us have grown up with, they are the Ramayana and the Mahabharat. We often use so much of metaphors, situations and comparisons in our normal life, if I were to talk to you, I may bring up some references there. So why I used that also to remind people that we are multiple millennia-old civilization. When we discuss the world, can we think about doing it on our terms and in our framework, in our construct? What I have tried to do is to take a particular theme and try to give it a Ramayana-type relevance. For eg., I've used the coalition building. How Lord Ram very carefully constructs a coalition and what it takes to construct a coalition? It doesn't happen by itself. In diplomacy, you've heard me say before that the two preeminent examples of diplomats are Hanuman and Shri Krishna. But there are others, Angad, for example, or even his mother Tara. These are people who in very difficult situations, practised their diplomatic skills.”