Budget Session: Prime Minister Narendra Modi used a book by a former CIA agent to target the Congress party and its leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Rahul Gandhi, on foreign policy.
“I would like to tell such people that if they are really interested in foreign policy and want to understand foreign policy and want to do something in the future, then I would tell such people to definitely read a book. The name of the book is JFK’s Forgotten Crisis,” Modi said, replying to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address in the Lok Sabha.
The prime minister said this book also describes the discussions and decisions between India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru, and the then-US President John F Kennedy. “When the country was facing many challenges, what game was going on in the name of foreign policy is revealed through this book,” Modi said.
By using the book’s reference, Modi targeted both Rahul Gandhi and Nehru on foreign policy. Gandhi had on Monday questioned why Modi was not invited to attend the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on January 20. Gandhi, speaking in the Lok Sabha, said that if there had been a robust system in place, the foreign minister need not have gone to the US to ‘seek’ invitations for the prime minister, sparking a political row.
CIA official Bruce Riedel
Titled ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War,’ the book, with Nehru and JFK on the cover, by former CIA official Bruce Riedel had first shot into the limelight at the time of its release in 2015 for its reference to Nehru. The Congress veteran had sought US assistance and had requested then President Kennedy to provide India jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression during the 1962 India-China war, according to the book.
The book is often cited by BJP supporters who cite the sentence from the book saying that “Nehru was more interested in talking to Jackie (JFK’s wife) than (President) Kennedy…”
“The instances from ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War’ by Bruce Riedel, relating to Jawaharlal Nehru that Prime Minister Narendra Modi just mentioned in the Lok Sabha,” Kanchan Gupta, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India said in a post on X.
Nehru was more interested in talking to Jackie (JFK’s wife) than (President) Kennedy.
Union Budget 2025 Session of Parliament, which began with President Droupadi Murmu addressing both Houses of Parliament on January 31, will continue until February 13 in the first leg. The session will reconvene on March 10 and continue until April 4. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2025 on February 1.
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