A day after Indian Union Minister Smriti Irani blasted US billionaire investor Geroge Soros for his remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, her colleague, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, has also hit out at the 92-year-old, calling him "old, rich, opinionated, and dangerous.",
He terms someone who "still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works."
Addressing a session with Australian Minister Chris Brown at the Raisina@Sydney Dialogue, Jaishankar said, "Soros is an old, rich opinionated person sitting in New York who still thinks that his views should determine how the entire world works...such people actually invest resources in shaping narratives."
The External Affairs Minister said 'people like him' think an election is good if the person they want to see, wins, and if the election throws up a different outcome, then they will say it is a flawed democracy.
Geroge Soros, the Hungarian-American businessman, who established the Open Society Foundations to 'promote democratic governance', had said Modi "is no democrat", alleging that "inciting violence against Muslims was an important factor in his meteoric rise".
Singling out Soros on a broader question regarding 'casual comments' on undermining of democracy in India, Jaishankar said he (Soros) "actually thinks that it doesn't matter that this is a country of 1.4 billion people -- we are almost that -- whose voters decide how the country should run."
"Soros said India is a democratic country, but he doesn't think the Prime Minister of India is a democrat. He earlier accused us of planning to strip millions of Muslims of their citizenship which of course didn't happen, it was a ridiculous suggestion," the minister said in Sydney.
"If you do this kind of scaremongering...millions of people will be deprived of citizenship. It actually does real damage to the societal fabric because somebody out there believes you. You create that kind of fear psychosis," he added.
He also termed Soros's comments "typical of a Euro Atlantic view".
Earlier on Friday Smriti Irani called upon Indians to unitedly respond to 'foreign powers who try to intervene in India's democratic processes'.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
