00:00I want to start by talking to you about the summit in Tianjin in China at which your Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present.
00:09And he was perhaps feeling rather angered while he was there by the tariffs that had been imposed upon India by the Trump administration.
00:18Some analysts saying that the message he was sending by being there is that India is a powerful country.
00:24It's got some influential friends in the world and that was visible for all to see.
00:29Do you think that's true?
00:31Well, not really. I wouldn't agree with that analogy.
00:36The SCO is an annual summit which takes place.
00:40There are the main countries, Russia, India, China, Pakistan, Iran has recently joined it and, of course, all the Central Asian countries.
00:49They get together. It's not really a security group, related group.
00:54It's a group for all kinds of consultations, security, trade, economic cooperation, et cetera, et cetera.
01:03Now, it's an important grouping because these three major countries, Russia, India and China, come together on that.
01:11We've had some very interesting instances in this past when in Tashkent, for example, two years ago, there was a time when the Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, spoke to Mr. Putin and advised him against the war in Ukraine at that particular time.
01:25And that was the first time that someone had actually spoken down to Mr. Putin and advised him.
01:30So it created a lot of interest around the world.
01:33Now, the issue here was Mr. Modi was traveling to China after seven long years.
01:40He had been in China last in 2018, and in the intervening period, we've had Galwan, we've had the Pengongso, the whole episode in eastern Ladakh, and the standoff with China, and of course, recently, the standoff with Pakistan.
01:58The interesting aspect of it also is that we are continuing with the issue with the United States, as far as the tariffs are concerned, and what is perceived to be a deteriorating relationship at the moment.
02:12Having said that, this is the backdrop with which this conference was being held.
02:16Did people expect that Mr. Modi would not go there?
02:19I don't really think so.
02:21Whatever the situation was, I think, well before Operation Sindhoor, a kind of a thaw between India and China had already emerged.
02:35They met at the BRICS conference, the Indian Prime Minister and the Chinese President earlier, six, eight months ago.
02:41And that was the beginning of the reset of the relationship.
02:44So Mr. Modi was anyway expected to go there.
02:47And it's an important conference at this particular juncture, when you're finding, all of a sudden, a grey zone in the international order, a resetting kind of taking place, not yet emerged completely.
03:03So I think in the midst of this, Mr. Modi would definitely not have been found missing in such an important conference.
03:10He was there to make a statement, yes, to send a message that we have good friends, that we are a democracy, we are autonomous, we respect our own strategic autonomy, we respect our relationship with the United States, but equally, we have friends in Russia, and we are resetting our relationship with China.
03:32I think all these messages were going out together.
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