Foreign Minister S Jaishankar explains why he cancelled meeting with US lawmakers

External Affairs Minister SJaishankar did not mince words at a news briefing on Thursday when asked about Jayapal’s resolution and whether he wanted to meet her to change her mind; this was before reports of the cancelled meeting.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar is understood to have backed out of a meeting with a group of US lawmakers on the sidelines of the 2+2 meeting on Wednesday as Indian officials feared it could be used by known critics of India to “harangue” the minister on Jammu and Kashmir instead of engaging with him with an open mind.

Jaishankar, an old hand at relations with the US as a former ambassador and one of few Indian officials familiar with the contours of American power structure, was scheduled to meet with the leadership of the foreign affairs committees of the House of Representatives and of the Senate on Wednesday after the 2+2 meeting in an outreach to discuss recent developments in India that have caused some concern on Capitol Hill, home to US congress.

He met with Senate foreign affairs committee leaders, Chairman Jim Risch (Republican) and Ranking Member Robert Menendez (Democrat) and gave his perspective on Kashmir and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act at the request of the lawmakers, offering a perspective, he told reporters later, that was more truthful and comprehensive than what they had gathered from published reports. According to congressional sources the minister faced some sharp questioning but he stayed and answered them.

Watch l ‘No interest in meeting US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’: S Jaishankar 

The meeting with the House foreign affairs committee, however, was called off because Indian officials believed “they deliberately changed the rules of the game” from meeting the committee and its leadership to meeting the sponsor of a bill critical of the restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir after the change in its constitutional status by the August 5 abrogation of Article 370.

Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic lawmaker of Indian descent, has introduced a bill that urges India to remove the restrictions and release political detainees. Rashida Tlaib, another Democratic lawmaker, has also moved a resolution seeking the same in language that’s been described as more vitriolic.

Indians felt the meeting with the House foreign affairs committee leadership — Chairman Eliot Engel (a Democrat) and Micael McCaul (a Republican) — would be used by Jayapal and Tlaib, neither of whom was a member of the committee but was invited to attend (it was not immediately clear if both Jayapal ad Tlaib had been invited to attend, or just Jayapal), to “harangue” the minister. The Indians were “open to meeting those who are open minded and objective but not those who are not”.

Minister Jaishankar himself did not mince words at a news briefing on Thursday when asked about Jayapal’s resolution and whether he wanted to meet her to change her mind; this was before reports of the cancelled meeting. “I am aware of that draft resolution (the one introduced by Jayapal recently) (and) I don’t think it’s a fair understanding of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir or a fair characterisation of what the government of India is doing,” he said.

And, he added, “I have no interest in meeting her. I have an interest in meeting people who are objective and (are) open to discussion but not people who have already made up their minds.”

Jayapal saw the cancellation of the meeting as evidence of the Indian government’s reluctance to see the other side. “This only furthers the idea that the Indian government isn’t willing to listen to any dissent at all,” she told the Washington Post, which first ran the story about Indians cancelling Jaishankar’s meeting with the House committee over Jayapal. “The seriousness of this moment should’ve been a reason for a conversation, not dictating who’s in the meeting, which seems very petty,” she added.

Congressional sources confirmed the Post story and defended the decision to invite Jayapal to the briefing meant for the leadership of the committee. “You cannot force us to disinvite people invited by us to the briefing,” said a person familiar with the developments.