S Jaishankar’s punishing Washington schedule aimed at countering Pakistan’s poison, tackling Kashmir

Foreign minister Subramanyam Jaishankar is currently in Washington DC, running an impossibly punishing schedule. He must, because prime minister Narendra Modi has entrusted Jaishankar with a job befitting the profile of India’s foremost strategic thinker, and it may test the limits of his considerable intellectual acumen. So far, India’s external affairs minister has remained up to the task — that of challenging, moulding and even shifting the international narrative on Kashmir by engaging actively with America’s formidable foreign policy establishment.

In a span of 72 hours, for instance, Jaishankar has met and/or is slated to meet/engage with five of the topmost think tanks in DC — Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Atlantic Council, the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution. Earlier, on the sidelines of United Nations General Assembly, he had addressed a session at the Council on Foreign Relations and Asia Society — both based in New York. In between, he also found time to appear on Singapore’s Channel News Asia.

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