Ram Jethmalani

“During his visit to India in December 2010, the soft-spoken Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao seems to have succeeded in convincing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the border dispute between the two countries belongs to the past, won’t be easy to resolve, and requires patience. Instead of using whatever diplomatic language was necessary to call this statement pure poppycock, the even more soft-spoken Dr Singh appears to have succumbed completely. When Mr Jiabao was asked whether he would advise Pakistan to stop terrorist activity, he made it clear that he would not. ‘That’s for the two of you to resolve,’ he bluntly said. Our prime minister obviously tried to flatter his guest in the hope of getting some response which he could sell to the Indian people when he declared that ‘the world will listen when India and China will speak with one voice’. The response he received to this piece of flattery was, ‘Our relationship is greater than the sum of its parts.’ To me the statement is an attractive piece of diplomatic craftsmanship meaning nothing. Without any countervailing advantage, the visit yielded a trade pact which will take the bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015, a complete economic sell-out in a year when the trade deficit was already approximately $20 billion.”
― Ram Jethmalani, RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT

“No court in America or the Commonwealth would extradite a person after 20 years when the government seeking extradition had originally consented to the proceedings being quashed. The government of course, will not produce the files containing the notings and the final decision to leave Anderson untouched. If any action had been taken as threatened, Anderson and Union Carbide would have publicly declared what they paid, how they paid and to whom they paid. That would have demolished the Congress government overnight and many of its leading figures would have landed in lock-ups and prisons.”
― Ram Jethmalani, RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT