Former British prime minister Boris Johnson praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a new memoir, calling him a “change-maker”. His memoir reflects upon his eventful political career and recalls a “curious astral energy” that he felt on his very first meeting with PM Modi.
The memoir, named 'Unleashed', hit the shelves in the UK this week. The former UK PM devoted a whole chapter to Britain’s relationship with India as “a relationship as good as it has ever been”.
In his memoir, Johnson repeatedly highlighted the strong India-UK friendship in the context of the Indo-Pacific and credited himself for setting the course for a “proper free-trade deal” with India thanks to finding "exactly the partner and friend" needed with PM Modi.
Johnson recalls his meeting with PM Modi at his City Hall
“For some reason, we went down to stand in the dark in the plaza by Tower Bridge, in front of a crowd of his supporters,” shares Johnson in the chapter entitled ‘Britain and India’, referencing his first meeting with Modi during a visit to his City Hall office by the river Thames when he was Mayor of London.
Felt his curious astral energy: Johnson on his first meeting with PM Modi
“He raised my arm and chanted something or other in Hindi, and though I couldn’t follow it I felt his curious astral energy. I have enjoyed his company ever since – because I reckon he is the change-maker our relationship needs. With Modi, I felt sure, we could not only do a great free-trade deal but also build a long-term partnership, as friends and equals,” he writes.
Johnson reveals how a “distinctly sniffy” UK Foreign Office had warned him off meeting the “Hindu nationalist” leader during an earlier mayoral trade delegation to India in 2012, a problem “soon dropped” to pave the way for a relationship that "hit an all-time high".
While he writes with pride of a similar "Anglo-Indian syncretism" in politics with his diverse Cabinet as PM including many British Indians such as Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel, Johnson laments the slow-paced growth of bilateral trade due to unnecessary trade barriers that leave UK visitors “clinking in with duty-free booze” for Indians starved of Scotch whisky at decent prices.
The “tremendous success” of his visit to India as PM in January 2022 he recalls as a much-needed “morale boost” and “balm for the soul” away from an increasingly belligerent domestic politics that would eventually end in his unceremonious exit from 10 Downing Street just a few months later.
He claims he had also wanted to use the visit to make a “gentle point to Narendra” on the issue of relations with Russia at a “global inflection point” with its conflict with Ukraine.
He writes: “I knew all the history and the sensitivities, the reasons for India’s post-war non-alignment with the West, the seemingly unbreakable relationship with Moscow. I understand the Indian dependence – like China’s – on Russian hydrocarbons.
“But I wondered if it was not time for a modulation, a rethink...As I was to put it to the Indians, Russian missiles were turning out to be less accurate, statistically, than my first serve at tennis. Did they really want to keep Russia as their main supplier of military hardware?”
It is in this context that in another section of the book, where he showers the late Queen Elizabeth II with effusive praise for her deep personal knowledge of history and history-makers, he references his efforts to get India to take a “tougher line” with Russians.
(With PTI inputs)
