External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar Saturday stressed on the need to define international relations beyond the parameters of western thought. At an international relations conference at Symbiosis International University in Pune, the diplomat-turned-politician said: “Even if the economics of the world may have shifted, the politics may be shifting, but if the culture doesn't move alongside these shifts, then those shifts will always remain incomplete”. He said it is necessary to think of our own history. “Of what are we about… How have we got to where we are… What are the forces which drove us… I think it is important today to look at all of these, if necessary, with fresh eyes, with an open mind.” He said Western intellectuals have no problem in accepting the “5000-year-old unbroken Chinese history”, but many of them would not give that same “privilege” and understanding to India. “In fact, an extreme example of that was Churchill himself, who said that India was no more a country than an equator,” said the foreign minister. Jaishankar also said that many equate “westernism” with modernism. “In everyday life, we use terms like Pyrrhic victory, Gordian knots, trojan horse. These are not just used but we have universalised it in a way. Generally, intellectual concepts, traditions and constructs are largely British.” “The thinkers whose names naturally come into your mind are Socrates and Plato. In the case of European statesman, people will quote Lord Palmerston on permanent interests but not remember that Kautilya said it several centuries before that,” he said
