Foreign policy 'weak-kneed' in dealing with Donald Trump, says Congress

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) met here on Tuesday in an effort to reconnect to its roots in the soil of Gujarat, and stressed that the region was the birthplace of two of its stalwarts — Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The party also sought to highlight that the Congress, and not the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was the true inheritor of Patel’s political legacy. It underlined the close relations between Jawaharlal Nehru and Patel, and how their “jugalbandi”, or partnership, helped shape the country.

 

The Congress also tried to define its idea of Indian nationalism and cultural ethos even as it flagged contemporary concerns such as “the BJP government’s weak-kneed foreign policy in the wake of the US imposition of 26 per cent reciprocal tariff” and the deporting of Indian nationals, who were “treated like animals”, but External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar justified this "inhumane treatment" in Parliament.

 

The CWC is the party’s highest decision-making body, and 158 members of the “extended CWC” attended the meeting with 35 absentees, including Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. When asked about her absence, Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal said she had taken permission from party chief Mallikarjun Kharge to skip the last leg of Parliament’s Budget Session and the CWC meeting. Congress Communications Chief Jairam Ramesh said that in total 35 of the extended CWC members were absent, and it was unfair to target one individual.

 

On the first day of the CWC’s two-day meeting here, the party passed a two-page resolution titled “Flagbearer of freedom movement – Our Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel”. It will pass two more resolutions on Wednesday, including one on the state of Gujarat’s society and economy, where it has flagged the poor social indices in the state. The Congress lost a close Assembly election in Gujarat in 2017 but suffered its biggest ever electoral defeat in the 2022 polls. It hopes to do better in the state in the 2027 Assembly polls and the effort is to rediscover its old ties with the state and its people.

 

In its other resolution, to be passed on Wednesday, the Congress has said that it remains a votary of close India-US ties but not at the expense of India’s national interests. The resolution states that India was publicly insulted during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington DC recently when it was labelled as a “tariff abuser”. It said the US demand that India lower duties on that country’s agricultural products, automobiles, alcoholic beverages, and pharmaceuticals will deal a serious blow to India’s farmers and its dynamic domestic automobile and pharmaceutical industries. “For the present, the BJP government’s foreign policy has been reduced to a policy of weak-kneed leadership and helpless submission, which is unacceptable,” the resolution states.