One of the leading Democratic Party candidates for US president thinks it's "deeply troubling" that India backed out of a meeting with a group of American lawmakers that included a critic of its Kashmir policy.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, currently third in the polls in the Democratic primary race, described the move as an effort to "silence" her party colleague Pramila Jayapal.
Jayapal recently introduced a Congressional resolution urging India to lift restrictions on communications in Jammu and Kashmir, among other things. She said the cancellation of the meeting -- between India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and members of the US Congress, the national lawmaking body -- was "deeply disturbing".
She said it "furthers the idea that the Indian government isn’t willing to listen to any dissent at all".
Elizabeth Warren said the US and India "have an important partnership -- but our partnership can only succeed if it is rooted in honest dialogue and shared a respect for religious pluralism, democracy, and human rights".
BJP MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar replied to Warren on Twitter that "we have no objections to Pramila Jayapal mumbling to herself or even to you on stuff she knows nothing about."
"It's just that we don't want to waste our time listening to her nonsense."
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Chandrashekhar then mocked Elizabeth Warren for her controversial past claims of Native American ancestry. S Jaishankar, on his part, said Pramila Jayapal's resolution wasn't a fair characterisation of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
He said he had no interest in meeting her and lawmakers who were neither objective nor open to discussion and had already made up their minds.