Aakar Patel | How Jaishankar put on mat in US over Hindutva and other issues Published : Jun 2, 2021, 7:20 am IST Updated : Jun 2, 2021, 7:20 am IST India under Narendra Modi has spent a lot of energy in drafting laws that go after minorities US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at the State Department in Washington, on May 28, 2021. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP) India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was till Saturday on a visit to the United States. The first half of his trip was apparently not very productive as the person he had come to meet, US secretary of state Antony J. Blinken, had to go to the Middle East on an urgent visit. Mr Jaishankar met him only several days after reaching the US. In the meantime, the minister met the Indian teams at the United Nations and had sundry other meetings. He also had an interview with former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. The general, who is familiar with India and has visited it, spoke about radicalism in the region and how extremism had hurt Pakistan. He then asked Mr Jaishankar: “I wanted to ask you about how you see political developments in your own country. You are not a partisan person. You have served with great distinction across many administrations. There is concern in the midst of the pandemic about some of these Hindutva policies that could be undermining the secular nature of Indian democracy… Are India’s friends right to be concerned about some of these recent trends?”