India Raising Concerns Over Human Rights Abuses in US Marks Emergence of New World Order - Observers

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday that Washington is "monitoring some recent concerning developments" in India, including "a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials". It was an unusual move as Blinken raised the issue before visiting Indian ministers.

Strategic experts have commended the blunt rebuttal by India's Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar over human rights issues.

Jaishankar said that New Delhi also has concerns about human rights in the US, a day after Blinken raised "recent concerning developments" in India.

"Look, people are entitled to have views about us", Jaishankar said.

"But we are also equally entitled to have views about their views and about the interests, and the lobbies and the vote banks which drive that. So, whenever there is a discussion, I can tell you that we will not be reticent about speaking out", the minister said in a strong push back at Washington on Wednesday.

India's strategic experts underlined that it is the first time New Delhi has shown that it can question the US on several contentious issues.

"How many nations can turn around and tell the US to look in the mirror. The arrival of India on the world stage is announced", retired Maj. Gen. Harsha Kakar underlines.

The US-India partnership is now a two-way street, and both nations are discussing bilateral issues on equal terms, experts observe.

"There will be no more 'lectures' to India about human rights, freedom, and democracy…I can't help but read Jaishankar's comments and think that a new dawn is upon us: a multipolar world", Derek J. Grossman, national security and Indo-Pacific analyst at the California-based RAND Corporation, says.

The Indian minister, who joined politics after spending decades as a diplomat, also stated that human rights issues were not discussed during the 2+2 ministerial dialogue held on Monday in Washington.

Blinken had said after the meeting that the US is monitoring human rights abuses by government, police, and prison officials in India.

Indian experts have now started pushing the government to commission an annual report on human rights in the US.

"Human rights is the West's trump card to put any challenger in its place. They did the same to China. So China started publishing a report on US' human rights record instead", Monika Verma, a Ph.D. scholar at the South Asian University, says.

The "tectonic change" in India's stand, as several experts assessed, has come amid an FBI report suggesting a 200% jump in hate crimes against Sikhs and a 73% rise in hate crimes against Asian people in the US.

Jaishankar flagged one such incident that occurred on Monday in New York whereby unknown assailants assaulted two Sikhs.