Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongs’s remarks on India in a speech in Parliament earlier this month caused a stir between the two countries that normally enjoy friendly relations.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs conveyed to Singapore’s High Commissioner Simon Wong that “remarks by the Prime Minister of Singapore (about India) were uncalled for”.
However, over a week since PM Lee’s comments, there are people who are still responding to them.
In a letter published in the South China Morning Post on Feb 26, one netizen wrote, “Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong would do well to keep his focus on his own country. India is a strong and vibrant democracy, unlike Singapore which has been led by virtually one party since 1959 with a very small opposition.”
In his lengthy Feb 15 speech during the debate on the Committee of Privileges’ report in the wake of the Raeesah Khan scandal, PM Lee praised India’s founding Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, among other national leaders.
However, in comparison to “Nehru’s India”, PM Lee said that today “according to media reports, almost half the MPs in the Lok Sabha [India’s lower house of Parliament] have criminal charges pending against them, including charges of rape and murder.
Though it is also said that many of these allegations are politically motivated.”
His remarks caused an outcry in India, which is unusual, as India and Singapore are strategic partners in the region.
SCMP published a letter from a Deepak Mirchandani on Feb 26 in response to a Feb 18 article on the site titled “Why Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong’s Nehru comments hit a raw nerve in India.”
Mr Mirchandani wrote that he took issue with one part of the article that mentioned where Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, was educated.
“Nobody, except the Congress party elite, cares,” he said, adding that an argument could be made that Nehru’s “elitist education alienated him from India’s masses.”
He added that as more Indians have come to recognize that Nehru’s economic policies had not strengthened the country’s standing worldwide, the “adulation that he once enjoyed” and that PM Lee had echoed, “has diminished.”
Mr Mirchandani also praised India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, writing that Nehru is not the only leader with the perspective that minorities are an integral part of the country “and that communalism in any form is deplorable.”
Mr Modi’s slogan is “‘Sabka sath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas’ (Together with everyone, development for all, the trust of all),” he added.
“During his tenure, Modi has largely achieved a high annual economic growth rate, invested in infrastructure, and made efforts to stamp out corruption,” wrote Mr Mirchandani. /TISG