Tokyo | Highlighting India's leadership among the Global South, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday said the 125 countries of the platform placed their trust in India and that China skipped the two meetings convened by India last year to listen to their concerns.
Addressing the Nikkei Forum on the India-Japan partnership here, India's top diplomat said that countries of the Global South feel for each other on a number of issues.
"On a lot of issues, these countries feel for each other. The feeling has been intensified by COVID because many countries of the Global South felt that they were the last in the line to get the vaccine. They even felt at the time when India became G20 President that their concerns were not even on the agenda of the G20.
"So we did last year two meetings of the voice of the Global South because we wanted to listen to these 125 countries and then put before the G20 a set of issues which were the collective views of these 125 countries.
Within Asia and Africa, Global South is very popular in those continents. They know exactly what is happening, who's speaking up for them, and how their issues are getting on the table.
"They don't think it is a coincidence that it was under the Indian presidency that the African Union, which had long been promised a seat in the G20, got a seat. So the Global South believes us," he said.
"The two summits which we convened last year to listen to their concerns, I don't believe China was present," Jaishankar said, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping not attending the G20 summit and deputing Premier Li Qiang instead.
About India's relationship with Russia and its criticism of Moscow's war in Ukraine, he said: "Sometimes in world politics, countries pick one issue, one situation, one principle and they highlight it because it suits them. But if one looks at the principle itself, we in India know better than almost any other country.
"Immediately after our independence, we experienced aggression, an effort to change our boundaries and even today parts of India are occupied by another country but we did not see the world respond saying, oh, there's a great principle involved and therefore, let us all go with India.
"Today we are being told that there are principles involved. I wish I'd seen that principle in play for the last 80 years. I've seen those principles cherry-picked," Jaishankar said.
"I would say injustice was done to us. I'm not advocating it should be done to everybody else. We have been very clear. My Prime Minister has stood next to President Putin and said we want to see the end to this conflict," he said.