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Srinagar, Dec 7 (PTI) Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal on Saturday said it was high time that India quit the Commonwealth -- a 56-member grouping, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire.
Sibal, who was speaking at the two-day Kashmir Literature Festival, also said India made some of the "biggest mistakes" in its foreign policy during Jawaharlal Nehru's tenure as prime minister due to key people being inducted into the foreign service from outside.
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Asked if India got involved in global affairs more than necessary by joining the Commonwealth, Sibal said the country's involvement was "inevitable".
"In a sense, it was inevitable because we were the first major country which became independent and that was the beginning of the unravelling of the British Empire. So, we were cast into a position where we had to lead the decolonisation process," he said.
The former foreign secretary asserted that India should not have joined the Commonwealth and added that it was high time for the country to quit the grouping.
Sibal said, "If you ask me, I would have said that we should not have been a member of the Commonwealth. Even if initially thought it was a useful thing to do, it is high time that we quit the Commonwealth. Quitting the Commonwealth now may give you emotional satisfaction -- we have moved ahead, we are a larger economy than Britain itself."
The career diplomat also said India made some of the "biggest mistakes" in its foreign policy during Nehru's tenure.
"Some of the biggest mistakes we have made in our foreign policy happened during Nehru's time. At the time, the key people involved were not from the Indian Foreign Service but had been inducted from outside," he said.
India, on the advice of the British, "fell into the trap" of taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations and then, "from a complainant, we became a defender", he said.
"There cannot be anything worse in terms of handling of diplomacy," he added.
He pointed to another foreign policy "mistake", saying, "We just handed over Tibet to China."
"We had no geopolitical sense. We handed Tibet to them without any advantages that we could extract from that, most important being a clear understanding of the border," said Sibal, who served as the foreign secretary during Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as prime minister.
These are the two most vital examples where mistakes in India's foreign policy "have continued to haunt us till today", he added.
Sibal also credited the present central government of popularising an interest in foreign policy among the people.
"The manner in which our external affairs minister is constantly on social media, he is lecturing everywhere. Apart from Twitter (X), any meeting held anywhere of industrialists or think-tanks, he is there talking about our foreign policy," said Sibal, who also served as an envoy in several countries.
"In fact, in a sense, popularising the interest in foreign policy, doing precisely what we understand is that, even if people do not have sufficient stakes in India's foreign policy, they should develop those stakes," he added.
Referring to G20 meetings being held in several parts of the country, including Jammu and Kashmir, the former foreign secretary said the thought behind it was to drum up support for the country's foreign policy among the masses.
"Why did the prime minister take the G20 meetings to locations all over the country? The whole idea was that people should see, rather understand, the various dimensions of India's foreign policy and how they have an interest in it and, therefore, get a wider public support for India's foreign policy decisions," Sibal said.
The two-day Kashmir Literature Festival kicked off at SKICC on Saturday.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
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