Ministers making students who were evacuated from war-torn Ukraine chant slogans in favour of the government was a "self-defeating spectacle", Congress leader Manish Tewari said on Monday.
Speaking on the discussion in Lok Sabha on the situation in Ukraine, the member also criticised the government, saying he had never seen such "self congratulatory ecstacy" as displayed during the evacuations.
India has a long history of conducting such evacuations and it has conducted 23 such evacuations since 1962-63, including from Burma, Kuwait, Lebanon and Libya, Tewari said as he lauded the way students were brought bach from the European nation.
"But I regret to say that I have never seen the kind of chest thumping and the kind of self congratulatory ecstacy that was at display during the recent evacuations. Making young students chant slogans in favour of the government in aeroplanes by ministers of the government of India, I think it was a self-defeating spectacle," he said.
Suggesting that the Nehruvian principles of non-alignment had held India in good stead between 1946-1991, the Congress leader said they are worth going back to.
"I would like to recommend to the government that strategic autonomy, the Nehruvian principles of non-alignment that held us in good stead are worth going back to. Those principles have stood the test of time," he said.
Tewari said, "I know friends from that side of the House leave no stone unturned and with every breathe try and criticise the first prime minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru."
"But the fact remains that those principles that were enunciated then, possibly have stood the test of time and the crisis in Ukraine and the position that the government of India has taken, possibly bears the most eloquent testimony to those principles which were articulated at the founding of our Republic," he said.
Tewari also said that Ukraine should have been sensitive to Russian concerns and the eastward expansion of NATO.
"Ukraine should have been a little more careful and circumspect...We may not really have the option to sit atop this iron curtain," he said on India's role in the crisis.
Speaking on the issue, RSP leader N K Premchandaran while appreciating the government's efforts to evacuate students from Ukraine, said that there was a "strategic flaw" in the plan to bring them home.
He said that priority should have been given to evacuate students from regions where more Russian attacks were underway like Kiev and Sumi. This could have saved them from suffering, Premchandaran said.
The MP also said that there seems to be an impression of India being a supporter of Russia, the aggressor, which needs to be clarified by the government.
"India's statement at the UN lacked the condemnation of Russian aggression. This has to be made clear... the political stand of India on this," Premchandaran said.
