Amid growing tensions with Bangladesh, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday asserted that the neighbouring countries will also grow when India progresses, while stating that New Delhi “invests, helps, and shares” to promote good neighbourliness.
During a discussion at an event at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Jaishankar was asked about the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh and India’s neighbourhood policy.
The senior minister, who was in Dhaka on Wednesday to represent India at the funeral of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, said India has neighbours of various kinds, some of which are good to the country or are at least not harmful.
“…Your natural instinct is to be kind, to help that neighbour, and that’s what we do as a country. When you look around our neighbourhood, wherever there is a sense of good neighbourliness, India invests, India helps, India shares,” the minister said as reported by news agency ANI.
‘India’s growth is a lifting tide’
Jaishankar pointed out India’s help to its neighbours during several crises like the COVID pandemic and economic stress.
“Most of our neighbours got the first shipment of vaccines from India. Some neighbours went through very exceptional stresses – a very notable one was Sri Lanka, and we actually stepped up with a package of USD 4 billion at a time when their negotiations with the IMF were still moving at a very glacial pace.
#WATCH | Tamil Nadu: On being asked about the unrest in Bangladesh and India’s neighbourhood policy, EAM Dr S Jaishankar says, “I was there in Bangladesh just two days ago. I had gone to represent India at the funeral of the former Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Begum Khalida Zia.… pic.x.com/T7g4UyhZw6
— ANI (@ANI) January 2, 2026
“Most of our neighbours have a realisation that India’s growth is today a lifting tide. If India grows, all our neighbours will grow with us. I think that’s the message which I also took to Bangladesh. They are right now heading for their elections. We wish them well in that election, and we hope that once things settle down, the sense of neighbourliness in this region will grow,” the foreign minister said, addressing the question of relations with Bangladesh when a number of Hindus have been killed in targeted attacks against minorities.
What S Jaishankar said at IIT Madras on India, democracy and the West
‘Bad neighbour’
Jaishankar also addressed Pakistan and the terrorism sponsored by it, stating that Islamabad cannot seek the benefits of good neighbourliness from India while seeking to bleed the country.
“You can also have bad neighbours. Unfortunately, we do. When you have bad neighbours, if you look to the one to the west. If a country decides that it will deliberately, persistently, and unrepentantly continue with terrorism, we have a right to defend our people against terrorism. We will exercise that right. How we exercise that right is up to us. Nobody can tell us what we should or should not do. We will do whatever we have to do to defend ourselves.
“Many years ago, we agreed to a water-sharing arrangement, but if you had decades of terrorism, there is no good neighbourliness. If there is no good neighbourliness, you don’t get the benefits of that good neighbourliness. You can’t say, ‘Please share water with me, but I will continue terrorism with you’. That’s not reconcilable,” Jaishankar stated categorically, ruling out any reconciliation with Pakistan unless it gave up supporting terrorists.
‘COVID vaccines… but for the fact India gave it to us’
The Union minister also explained how New Delhi’s move to share COVID vaccines with developing and underdeveloped countries of the world raised India’s stature globally. He also recalled how the West had created a stockpile of the vaccines while denying access to not-so-rich countries.
#WATCH | Tamil Nadu: At IIT Madras, EAM Dr S Jaishankar says, “In my entire career, I have never seen anything having a greater emotional impact on the rest of the world than giving vaccines. I’ve actually had people who tear up when they remember the first vaccine shipment.… pic.x.com/iQuD5Uj3HH
— ANI (@ANI) January 2, 2026
“In my entire career, I have never seen anything having a greater emotional impact on the rest of the world than giving vaccines. I’ve actually had people who tear up when they remember the first vaccine shipment. COVID was a bad memory. We have put it all behind us. But at that time, there were developed countries, western countries, who had stocked up eight times the number of vaccines as their population and next to them were small countries to whom they were not willing to give 10,000 doses. We were someone who had the responsibility of 1.4 billion people. We felt at that time giving those countries 100-200 thousand doses was something which would be a gesture of solidarity, would be make or break for them. Today, we talk less about vaccines. When I go to Latin America, when I go to small island states, people from the Caribbean, people from the Pacific, say, ‘we have no chance of getting within smelling distance of vaccine, but for the fact that you people give it to us’,” the EAM stated.