India 'warns' Swedish newspaper, asks for retraction of parts
of the Pranab’s Bofors interview
Full text of letter dated May 25, 2015 from Banashri Bose Harrison,
Ambassador of India to Sweden and Latvia
(Embassy of India letter head with Make in India Logo)
addressed to Peter Wolodarski, Editor-in-Chief, Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm
President Pranab Mukherjee during the DN interview
The government of India has reportedly “warned” the Swedish national daily Dagens Nyhetter to remove those sections of the interview with the President of India that speak about Bofors, failing which the Presidential visit could be cancelled, according to the Swedish daily.
“In a telephone conversation with the DN prior to the publication of the article the Ambassador made a direct request that DN was to retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors. She also warned that the planned visit was at risk of being cancelled,” the influential daily has written.
A copy of the letter written by the Indian Ambassador to Sweden has been secured by The News Minute (TNM). In the letter, Banashri Bose Harrison, the Ambassador of India to Sweden & Latvia, says that an off record ‘slip of the tongue’ was reported during the interview, and that the third question on Bofors asked by the interviewer was portrayed as the first question in the aired version.
The daily refused to expunge parts of the interview. “The president became engaged and was upset when Bofors was mentioned during a question regarding how we can avoid corruption today. Of course we had to tell our readers about his reaction,” Peter Wolodarski, Editor-in-Chief of DN said.
Swedish media has been closely following the reactions in India and Wolodarski said the response to his interview shows that there public in India is as interested if not more than in Sweden about the whole story.
At the end of the interview, Wolodarski reportedly quipped that the President had mixed up Sweden and Switzerland several times in the interview. The Ambassador called that “unprofessional and unethical.” India has also accused DN of misleading the audience by shortening the interview.
“I find the Ambassador’s reaction regretful. It is surprising that someone representing the world’s largest democracies is trying to micromanage which questions we should ask a head of state and which answers should be published,” Woladarski said.
Read full story on DN here.
http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/india-warns-swedish-newspaper-asks-retraction-parts-pranab%E2%80%99s-bofors-interviewDagens Nyheter’s interview with the President of India has created a crisis. The authorities in Delhi has sent an official letter to DN, expressing their disappointment.
Sunday marks the start of the first state visit to Sweden by an Indian leader. DN met with Indias president Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi in the weeks preceding this visit. During the interview the President commented on the Bofors affair, an incident that has plagued Swedish-Indian relations for a long time.
The President stated then that the Bofors wasn’t a scandal, but rather a ”media trial”.
”I am not describing it. You are putting that word. Don’t put that word”, the President said to DN’s editor in chief Peter Wolodarski during the interview in the presidential palace.
Full unedited clip above - sound audio from longer interview below article.
President Mukherjee’s comment has since then received a lot of attention in India, and was quoted in the country’s major media outlets on Tuesday. Bofors is still a sensitive matter in India.
On Tuesday Dagens Nyheter received an official letter from the Indian ambassador in Stockholm where she expresses ”disappointment” in the interview. She says that DN neglected to show the President the ”courtesy and respect” that he deserves as head of state.
In a telephone conversation with DN prior to the publication of the article the Ambassador made a direct request that DN was to retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors. She also warned that the planned state visit was at risk of being cancelled.
”I told the Ambassador that we couldn’t accept her demands. The president became engaged and was upset when Bofors was mentioned during a question regarding how we can avoid corruption today. Of course we had to tell our readers about his reaction”, says Peter Wolodarski.
”The reactions in Indian media show that his answers are of public interest, even more so in India than in Sweden.”
At the end of the interview DN light heartedly mentioned the fact that the President mixed up Sweden and Switzerland several times. This was ”unprofessional and unethical” by the newspaper, according to the Ambassador. She also claims that DN, by shortening a video interview from six minutes to three, misled the audience.
”I find the Ambassador’s reaction regretful. It is surprising that someone representing the world's largest democracies is trying to micromanage which questions we should ask a head of state, and which answers should be published”, says Peter Wolodarski.
”DN published four pages in our Sunday edition, containing almost every answer from the Indian president. We have conducted the interview in the same manner as we do whenever we interview other heads of state and government.”
Translated from Swedish.
You are right Mr. President, Bofors wasn't a scandal, it was a mega-scandal
Chitra Subramaniam| Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - 18:06![]()
"No Indian court has given verdict on (the Bofors case)…how could you say it is a scandal?” the President of India rhetorically asks Sweden’s leading daily Dagens Nyhetter (DN).
You are right, Mr. President. Bofors was not a scandal – it was a mega-scandal. It was the story of how India and its institutions shook at their roots to protect one person and his few friends. It was a story of how India’s most popular Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi betrayed the faith reposed in him, his bureaucrats, the executive and the judiciary. When he said at Congress's 100th anniversary in Mumbai that he would rid the system of influence peddlers and touts, I believed him. When I started working on the Bofors story, it was in the belief that I was making a contribution to that commitment to rid India of corruption. Little did I know then that people close to Mr. Gandhi would be among the prime accused.
Bofors is not just about India. It was also a scandal that shook a government in Sweden – the government of Olof Palme who diverted development aid to finance the bribes and escalating costs of the Indian deal. It was a scandal that pushed the Swiss government to transfer secret bank documents to India after a ten year court battle in the Alpine nation. Following that success, Bern tightened its laws on governing matters of mutual assistance to third countries in criminal matters.
To say there was no scandal because no Indian court has called it one is irresponsible. It is damaging to Indians as it shows us up as a people unwilling to take responsibility and move on. It comes at a time when the world is looking at India to invest despite our reputation. It’s a steep climb for Indians who are committed to the country and want to work honestly. The president has damaged those efforts by his remarks.
The Bofors-India Howitzer deal relates to the sale of 144 mm Howitzers to India by the Swedish arms company Bofors in the late 1980s. The guns were excellent, the price was competitive but there was a problem. There were bribes and they were paid to the late Ottavio Quattrocchi, a close friend of the Rajiv Gandhi family. The question that gets asked even today is – was Mr. Gandhi involved? To date, there is no piece of information linking him to the payoffs, but he unleashed a massive cover-up involving every arm of the government and spared no one. Even the army was tarred.
As a reporter who covered the story for ten years including securing the 350 documents that nailed the lies peddled by the governments of India and Sweden, neither me nor my family escaped scrutiny. It came close – my little son was threatened. Even that is par for the course. What is not acceptable, Mr. President, is that you attempt to re-write history from an untenable position because that is what Swedish journalists have commented on your remarks. Bofors is not history in Sweden as you think it is. It is part of their history.
The Swedish National Audit Bureau (SNAB), the Swedish police, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice and Police in Switzerland, the judges and courts in the canton of Geneva, to name just a few, are the official places which enquired into the guns for bribes allegation and concluded that that was the case. There were parliamentary hearings in Sweden and politicians were questioned. The Swedish state television recently made a documentary on the Bofors-India case detailing what it meant for Sweden to learn that Olof Palme was fully aware of the corruption in the Indian deal.
There was no conviction in India because Quattrocchi was invited to flee New Delhi (from his home in Golf Links) as soon as I filed a copy linking him to the bribes. Who tipped him off? There was no case in India because there was no pressure on Sweden to bring the CEO of Bofors the late Martin Ardbo to justice in India.
I will always remember an interview with the late General Krishnaswami Sundarji. Commenting on the cover up, he said the kind of damage that was being done to the system would take years to recover, if recovery was possible. How does the President hope to build trust and strengthen relationship with a country when he refuses to acknowledge a very tumultuous period in Indo-Swedish history?
http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/you-are-right-mr-president-bofors-wasnt-scandal-it-was-mega-scandal
Mukherjee's comments a 'bad mistake', Swedish Bofors journalist tells TNM
TNM Staff| Monday, May 25, 2015 - 08:43
Bo G Andersson is one of Sweden’s most respected investigative journalists. He was lead reporter for the influential Swedish daily Dagens Nyhetter (DN) and contributed significantly to the Bofors-India Howitzer scandal which rocked the government of Rajiv Gandhi in the late 1980s, eventually leading to its downfall in 1989. Andersson is no longer a journalist, but DN invited him to comment on Indian President Pranab Mukherjee’s statement that the Bofors case was not a scandal but a media trial. “This is an attempt to rewrite history…it will certainly not build confidence among the Swedes and strengthen trust,” Andersson told TNM in an exclusive interview. Excerpts.
1. What do you make of President Pranab Mukherjee’s comment?
A: His comment is an obvious attempt to play down and rewrite historical facts. I believe it is a bad mistake. Mr Mukherjee has belonged to many governments led by the Congress Party, and has been close to the Gandhi family for decades. Therefore it is not far-fetched to look upon his comment as a way to re-establish the reputation of the party and maybe also of Rajiv Gandhi in this context.
A: His comment is an obvious attempt to play down and rewrite historical facts. I believe it is a bad mistake. Mr Mukherjee has belonged to many governments led by the Congress Party, and has been close to the Gandhi family for decades. Therefore it is not far-fetched to look upon his comment as a way to re-establish the reputation of the party and maybe also of Rajiv Gandhi in this context.
2. How will this play out during his visit to Sweden at the end of this month?
A: Most Swedes, old enough to remember the scandal, don´t look upon the bribe accusations as a “media trial”. They remember the facts, for example the thousands of documents released from Swiss banks as a result of requests from India. So, if his mission with the official visit to Stockholm is to “strengthen the trust” between the countries this is a shaky start.
A: Most Swedes, old enough to remember the scandal, don´t look upon the bribe accusations as a “media trial”. They remember the facts, for example the thousands of documents released from Swiss banks as a result of requests from India. So, if his mission with the official visit to Stockholm is to “strengthen the trust” between the countries this is a shaky start.
3. You said this is an attempt to rewrite historical facts. Can you explain?
A: It is correct that the Bofors scandal never led to sentences in the Indian courts. But that was not due to lack of evidence, which the Indian president implicitly says in the interview. The real reason was that several of the main suspects in the bribe case managed to avoid justice. Bofors CEO Martin Ardbo refused to go to India, despite many requests from the court, and the India-based Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochi ran away to Malaysia where he lived for many years.
A: It is correct that the Bofors scandal never led to sentences in the Indian courts. But that was not due to lack of evidence, which the Indian president implicitly says in the interview. The real reason was that several of the main suspects in the bribe case managed to avoid justice. Bofors CEO Martin Ardbo refused to go to India, despite many requests from the court, and the India-based Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochi ran away to Malaysia where he lived for many years.
4. What effect will this have from a media perspective for the Indian president during his visit – will the Swedish media pick this up?
A. They already have. I was interviewed yesterday in Dagens Nyheter, where I worked earlier. How the media on a whole will react is hard to say. Though, I believe there is a risk that some focus during the visit unintentionally will fall on the bribe scandal as a result of this. The affair is not at all “dead” in Sweden. It is still something that people refer to. I participated a few weeks ago in a well known Swedish radio show, for young listeners. The journalists that led the programme wanted to know every detail of this big scandal. It has become modern history, and what really happened with the bribe money still attracts attention.
A. They already have. I was interviewed yesterday in Dagens Nyheter, where I worked earlier. How the media on a whole will react is hard to say. Though, I believe there is a risk that some focus during the visit unintentionally will fall on the bribe scandal as a result of this. The affair is not at all “dead” in Sweden. It is still something that people refer to. I participated a few weeks ago in a well known Swedish radio show, for young listeners. The journalists that led the programme wanted to know every detail of this big scandal. It has become modern history, and what really happened with the bribe money still attracts attention.
5. Corruption was at the center of the Bofors deal. Are the Swedes still worried that corrupt practices of this nature continue in India?
A: Unfortunately, I believe that is true to a certain extent. And for this reason the comment of Mr Mukherjee was the worst thing that could have happened from an communication point of view. It now looks like India is not taking bribes seriously. What about Mr Mukherjee´s advisors? I doubt that this is something that was planned with them. If so, it is even worse in that case, as the comment then reflects Mr Mukherjee´s own and genuine views on this matter. The president should – and could - have said something like this: “What happened during the 80s in the howitzer deal was really a serious matter and it did a great deal of harm on the relations between the countries. I do hope that it never will happen again. Fighting corruption is a top priority and an important concern for any indian government. This said, I hope that the time now have come when Sweden and Indian can put the scandal behind and focus on trade and other issues. It is important to remember that our relations go all the way back to the birth of India as an independent nation”.
A: Unfortunately, I believe that is true to a certain extent. And for this reason the comment of Mr Mukherjee was the worst thing that could have happened from an communication point of view. It now looks like India is not taking bribes seriously. What about Mr Mukherjee´s advisors? I doubt that this is something that was planned with them. If so, it is even worse in that case, as the comment then reflects Mr Mukherjee´s own and genuine views on this matter. The president should – and could - have said something like this: “What happened during the 80s in the howitzer deal was really a serious matter and it did a great deal of harm on the relations between the countries. I do hope that it never will happen again. Fighting corruption is a top priority and an important concern for any indian government. This said, I hope that the time now have come when Sweden and Indian can put the scandal behind and focus on trade and other issues. It is important to remember that our relations go all the way back to the birth of India as an independent nation”.
Andersson is now a consultant and media advisor at the Swedish public relations agency Westander.
Bofors was not a scandal but a media trial, President Pranab tells Swedish media
TNM Staff| Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 20:18![]()
Image source: Screenshot/DN.se video
Image source: Screenshot/DN.se video In his heart, President Pranab Mukherjee is apparently still a Congressman. Ahead of a state visit to Sweden, President Mukherjee told Peter Wolodarski, Editor-in-Chief of the influential Swedish national daily Dagens Nyhetter (DN) that the Bofors scandal was a media trial, and that it has not been proven to be a scandal in a court of law in India. In an interview given to Wolodarski at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, the President said, "First of all - it is yet to be to be established that there was a scandal. No Indian court has established it. I was the defence minister of the country long after Bofors, and all my generals certified that this is one of the best guns we are having. Till today, Indian army is using it. The so-called scandal which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I’m afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity." When asked if the Bofors scam was just a media scandal, he said, "I do not know. I’m not describing it, you’re putting that word. Don’t put that word. What I am saying is that in media it was publicised. But up to now, no Indian court has given any decisive verdict about the alleged scandal." The Bofors-India weapons for bribes was a political scandal relating to kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field howitzers. The scandal implicated several Congress politicians, including then Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi. The scandal is also believed to be responsible for bringing down the Rajiv Gandhi government. A ten year court battle between New Delhi and the arms dealers and beneficiaries in Swiss courts ended with India securing access to secret Swiss bank documents detailing the bribes. This was the first time in the history of Swiss legal assistance in criminal matters with India that such a document transfer was achieved.
http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/bofors-was-not-scandal-media-trial-president-pranab-tells-swedish-media
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Photograph: Lars Lindqvist![]()
Photograph: Lars Lindqvist![]()
Photograph: Lars Lindqvist![]()
Photograph: Lars Lindqvist
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/bofors-was-a-media-trial-says-president-of-india/
“Bofors was a media trial”, says President of India
Bokmärk artikel
Publicerad 2015-05-24 06:21
NEW DELHI. • Next week, the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, begins the first state visit to Sweden by an Indian leader. Prior to the president’s trip, DN’s Editor-in-Chief Peter Wolodarski had an exclusive interview with the leader of the world’s largest democracy.
• Pranab Mukherjee condemns the high profile gang rapes in the country, however does not want to discuss them as patterns but rather refers to them as individual cases.
• He promises that 400 million people will be lifted out of extreme poverty within the next 10 years.
• The Bofors Affair, which has long plagued the Swedish-Indian relationship, was no scandal but rather a media trial.
- I’m not describing it, you’re putting that word. Don’t put that word, says the President to Dagens Nyheter.
On the table between the president’s two visitor chairs is the Constitution of India. Pranab Mukherjee leans forward and points:
- This is one of the originals. We have ten copies, all signed. Here you see Nehru’s signature, India’s first prime minister.
The president has just expressed regret the fact that DN’s photographer Lars Lindqvist won’t be able to take pictures of him in the gardens, as we had planned. The time is now passed 1 p.m. in the afternoon in New Delhi and it is almost 40 degrees outside. Mukherjee is 79 years old and has recently undergone heart surgery; the doctors advise against switching between high temperatures and air conditioning.
The president doesn’t walk fast, and during the 45 minutes we meet he is surrounded by a score of male employees, some with clearer roles than others. The Press Secretary, who is constantly one step behind, has warned that we cannot expose the president to a combination of sunlight and heat.
Next week, Pranab Mukherjee lands in Stockholm for a historic state visit.
- Our first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, visited Sweden as early as 1957. His grandson who later on became Prime minister, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, also visited Sweden in 1988, he reminds us.
- But no Indian President has ever visited Sweden. So the Minister of External Affairs suggested that it might be desirable to do so.
On the TV by the President’s desk, we see Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking for Chinese students in Beijing.
On the TV by the President’s desk, we see Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking for Chinese students in Beijing.
Photograph: Lars LindqvistModi is the outsider in Indian politics, who just a year ago achieved a political upset in the parliamentary elections when his opposition party BJP won the biggest victory in the country in 30 years. He is a Hindu nationalist, in contrast to the secular Indian National Congress Party. Modi came from the side, far away from the political and media classes in New Delhi. His external communications, he handles primarily through social media; Modi doesn’t even have a traditional press secretary. He distrusts the mainstream media.
Pranab Mukherjee is the opposite: he is a veteran of the Congress Party, which dominated Indian politics, and which Olof Palme’s Social Democrats had close cooperation with. President Mukherjee has belonged to the country’s political elite since Indira Gandhi’s days. Since the early 1970s, he has occupied just about every governmental position that one can imagine – except for one, Prime Minister. But for the Nehru-Gandhi family’s total dominance in the post-war India, Mukherjee might have also managed to lead the government.
Instead, he became president three years ago, a role that is essentially ceremonial.
What do you hope to achieve with your visit to Sweden?
- To strengthen the relationship.
In which areas?
- All areas, including economic cooperation, United Nations reforms and to fight against what I regard as one of the biggest menace to peace and tranquillity – terrorism.
- In the economic area, we can expand our bilateral trade. Sweden is basically a trading nation. But India’s share of your trade is just peanuts.
Mukherjee calls for Swedish investments in infrastructure, power and railways.
- Today, these sectors are open for investments from abroad, he points out.
In the 1980s, the relations between Sweden and India were seriously damaged when the Swedish arms manufacturing company Bofors sold howitzers for billions to India.
Photograph: Lars LindqvistHidden payments in the millions were made to a company in Switzerland, which was controlled by an Indian, and the corruption charges led up to the top of the Congress Party. In unclear circumstances, the Swedish Inspector-General of Military Equipment was killed in the tunnelbanana/metro in Stockholm.
The Bofors Affair’s explosive power was so great that the name became a derogatory adjective in the Indian language - “there is something båfors with this car.” The Affair contributed to then Prime Minister Gandhi’s defeat in the parliamentary elections in 1989. And in both India and Sweden, several investigations were initiated.
In New Delhi, we are skilfully assured that “The Bofors ghost” is buried, and perhaps that change in particular has contributed to the state visit.
I didn’t plan on taking up the old armaments corruption scandals, but rather on asking a question about how new Bofors affairs with the accompanying corruption can be avoided, especially if trade between Sweden and India is to increase.
At this point, President Mukherjee becomes animated:
- First of all - it is yet to be to be established that there was a scandal. No Indian court has established it, he reminds us.
- I was the defence minister of the country long after Bofors, and all my generals certified that this is one of the best guns we are having. Till today, Indian army is using it.
- The so-called scandal which you talk of, yes, in the media, it was there. There was a media trial. But I’m afraid, let us not be too much carried by publicity.
So it was a media scandal?
- I do not know. I’m not describing it, you’re putting that word. Don’t put that word. What I am saying is that in media it was publicised. But up to now, no Indian court has given any decisive verdict about the alleged scandal.
President Mukherjee seldom gives interviews. In principle it is only in connection with a visit to another country and a few times per year at home in India.
Photograph: Lars LindqvistThe presidential building Rashtrapati Bhavan in central New Delhi, with 340 rooms and hallways totalling 2.5 kilometres, has also been difficult to access.
When Mukherjee became President in 2012, he himself had a very limited personal experience with building. He was a stranger in the former British governor’s complex, which was erected after the First World War in the classical style, inspired by Indian local tradition. In 1947, the building became the site for the transfer of power from the British colonial power to the new, independent India.
- I did not know how I would be able to make use of this building (laughter)! I hade no knowledge about the utility, remarks the President.
Mukherjee sat in Parliament for 43 years and was a government Minister for nearly a quarter century. During this time, most of his life he spent within this 5-7 kilometre area in central New Delhi, where he lived and where the North Block and the South Block are located, which among other institutions houses the Cabinet Secretariat and the Parliament.
- I had practically no knowledge about the life of president or many of the historic rooms of this building, where momentous changes took place.
- So when I came here, I decided to take measures to allow the building to become more accessible to the people, let the schoolchildren come.
India, with its 1.2 billion inhabitants, is the world’s largest democracy. Since the economic shift towards a market economy in the early 1990s, it is also one of the fast-growing countries and a talent pool for the world’s IT companies.
- We are one of the largest markets in the world. Many people who work here are well educated. By 2025, India will have the largest workforce in the world. The ancient civilisation will be a young nation, observes Pranab Mukherjee.
- Movements of industrial goods and technology take place not in the desert or in the ocean but where there are good prospects of return on investments.
Meanwhile one-third of the country’s population, 400 million people, still live in extreme poverty, that is the equivalent of $1.25 a day. By comparison, 500 million people live in the entire EU area. No other country has as many poor people as India does.
The solution to the problem is continued high economic growth, asserts the president.
- If we can attain 8-9 percent GDP growth over say 10 years, we will be able to resist poverty, he projects.
How much?
- Totally.
Totally?
- Our objective is elimination. I’m telling you, we are to achieve at least 8-9 percent GDP growth for the next 10 years, and then extreme poverty will be gone.
Before Mukherjee became president in 2012, he was India’s finance minister for several years; a period that is generally regarded as a failure. India received international criticism for its tax policies.
Photograph: Lars LindqvistUnder Prime Minister Modis’ leadership, things look more bright for the economy, but there is still some way to go to reach 8-9 percent GDP growth. China has a higher level of prosperity per inhabitant.
- I am proud of my democracy, our multi-party, democratic system. There were many a skeptic 65 years ago when we adopted this system.
- It can be said that they had arguably good reason to doubt. The country was diverged, just divided on the lines of religion, various castes and various ways of life, poverty stricken, backwards, illiterate.
Is the Chinese one-party system more effective?
- I would not like to comment or make a comparative study between the systems. Building consensus is a time consuming process. But even so, even if time has a price, it is much better to achieve something by consensus.
Pranab Mukherjee asks if I know how big the Indian electorate was last year. “More than 800 million,” he says, answering his own question, and then adds with a smile: “And what is the total population of Sweden?”
9 million.
- 9 million (he repeats, as he smiles and gently laughs)
- More than 800 million people had the right to vote here, and more than 67 percent participated in the election. Governments are replaced peacefully. And that has not happened only once, but several times.
Pranab Mukherjee speaks with pride of the Indian democracy, but is reluctant to review other countries or their governments.
- You know that various countries have taken various modes of administration.
The answer becomes terse when I ask about the Chinese one-party dictatorship. We also touch on Russia and President Putin, since Pranab Mukherjee has recently returned from a visit to Moscow, where he participated in the Russian celebration of Victory Day in World War II.
The answer becomes terse when I ask about the Chinese one-party dictatorship. We also touch on Russia and President Putin, since Pranab Mukherjee has recently returned from a visit to Moscow, where he participated in the Russian celebration of Victory Day in World War II.
Most Western leaders boycotted the gathering. You chose to go. Why was it important?
- I do feel that the day of victory in World War II is not just any day. I don’t know, but what I have read, they’ve mixed it up with certain local issues, explained the president.
- You’re probably too young, just 38 years old I’m told, to remember what happened 20 years ago when the 50th anniversary was celebrated. When the whole of Europe was in Moscow on Red Square. I was there as Foreign Minister. President Clinton was there. And from there they went to Paris.
The reason for the boycott was the war in Ukraine.
- On Ukraine, we have very clear observations. We support the Minsk declaration and the February package. We have always believed that all international disputes are to be resolved through dialogue and discussion, neither by the use of force nor the threat of the use of force. Therefore, I believe that it will be possible for the parties to find an acceptable solution.
You’ve met President Putin several times. How would you describe him?
- It is not my job. I’m sorry, I don’t want these type of questions.
On the one hand, India is the world’s largest democracy. On the other hand, exceptionally watchful that a foreign policy is not forced upon any grouping of countries, democracies or not. They keep the door open in several directions and still relies on their old ally Russia’s veto in the UN Security Council, if this is necessary.
They are a proud nation, sensitive to the Europeans and Americans who are trying to teach or to master.
The high profile British documentary “India’s Daughter,” which is about the brutal gang rape in Delhi in December 2012, is questioned on the ground, even if official India condemned the incident.
- To be very frank, it is against the core civilizational values of India. In regard to the individual cases, the law enforcing agencies have taken appropriate steps to guarantee safety and security for women. Other steps have also been taken, says Pranab Mukherjee.
But how should we understand these cases, what went wrong?
- These are individual cases; therefore they are maybe psychopathic cases. In normal situations, these types of things do not happen. I’m not minimizing, even one case in a million must be condemned. But these are aberrations. You cannot take aberrations as the rule.
The president speaks of individual units, not patterns. I ask why the vast majority of the country’s abortion targets unborn girls, and receive the response that a variety of initiatives have been taken so that girls should have the same opportunities in society as boys do.
- At one point in time in our social system there was a bias for the son and there was some discrimination, but all efforts have been made to remove that discrimination, he explains.
What is the most important thing that can be done to strengthen the position of women in India?
- Political empowerment and economic empowerment – women must have an independent source of income.
Pranab Mukherjee has played a key role in Indian politics since the early 1970s. What is the most important change during his time in power?
Progress in science and technology, he mentions spontaneously.
- We managed to send up satellites in Mars orbit – no other country did it on the first attempt.
- India’s economy has grown by 7.5 percent per year over the past two decades. Despite Europe’s economic crisis and the international financial crisis, India has been able to maintain harmony and peace.
Where do you find your inspiration?
- It comes from our way of life, our scriptures, from our civilisation. The teaching of Indian civilisation is to live in peace; peaceful coexistence.
More than 30 minutes have passed. President Pranab Mukherjee concludes the interview, but insists on making a clarification before he stands up to briefly guide us through the paintings in the presidential building’s State Corridor.
- One thing I must correct, he says.
- Two, three times during the interview, I have used the word Swiss. I of course meant Swedish.
Translated from Swedish.
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/bofors-was-a-media-trial-says-president-of-india/