"Well Said": Amitabh Bachchan On S Jaishankar's India 'Not A Bully' Remark

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan on Monday praised External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar for his India 'not a bully' remark.

At an event last week, Mr Jaishankar was asked whether India was being perceived as 'a big bully' in the sub-continent and the Indian Ocean region.

"When you say India is perceived as a big bully, you know, big bullies don't provide USD 4.5 billion when the neighbours are in trouble," he responded.

Mr Bachchan took to his official X account and shared a video of the Minister's viral response.

"Wah (wow).. well said Sir," he said.

Mr Jaishankar's retort came months after Maldives President Mohamad Muizzu, in an apparent dig at India, said that no country had the licence to "bully us".

"We may be small but this doesn't give them the license to bully us," he said in January amid a diplomatic row with India over derogatory social media posts by his ministers against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"This (Indian) ocean does not belong to a specific country. This ocean also belongs to all countries situated in it," he said, in an indirect jibe at New Delhi.

What S Jaishankar Said

Speaking further on the "big bully" question, S Jaishankar said that India's trade, investments, and travel with its neighboring countries, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and even Maldives, have seen a sharp rise.

"Big bullies don't supply vaccines to other countries when COVID-19 is on or make exceptions to their own rules to respond to food demands or fuel demands or fertilizer demands because some war in some other part of the world has complicated their lives," Mr Jaishankar said at the book launch event on Saturday.

"Today at the connectivity, just the volume of people moving up and down, the volume of the trade which is there, the investments which are there, it's actually a very, very good story to tell. Not just with Nepal and Bangladesh, with Sri Lanka as well, I would say even with Maldives," he said.