Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi a lot. He said that when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time in London, he felt his unique subtle energy. Johnson says that on his first business trip to India as Mayor of London in 2012, the FCDO asked him not to meet PM Modi. This is because he was a Hindu nationalist. Yet when I met him for the first time a few years later, outside City Hall, he took my hand and said something in Hindi and I felt his unique subtle energy. Johnson has written these things in his book “Unleashed”.
After Russia's attack on Ukraine, he came to India in April 2022 to distance India from Russia. He said the reception he received was like a well-planned orgy of state-sponsored Beatlemania, The Times of India reported. He said he understood the reasons for India's post-war non-alignment with the West and India's dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.
Referring to Russia and China, he writes, “I wondered whether it was not time for a change or a rethink. Whether India really wanted to be aligned with these autocratic countries.”
He told the Indians that the Russian missiles were proving to be statistically less accurate than their first serves in tennis. Did they really want to have Russia as their main supplier of military hardware?
Boris Johnson writes, “Overcoming MoD doubts, we agreed to work together on all types of military technology, from submarines to helicopters and marine propulsion units.”
Johnson revealed a private conversation he had two days before Queen Elizabeth's death at Balmoral in September 2022. He told them about the difficulties the UK government was facing in convincing India to take a tough stance with the Russians on the Ukraine war. He told them something that Jawaharlal Nehru had told him in the 1950s. Rani told Johnson, 'He told me that India will always support Russia and some things will never change. That's it.”
