Beef politics in India a cause for anxiety: Nalanda Univeristy chancellor

NEW DELHI: India's beef politics resulting from the NDA government's apparent disdain for those fond of bovine flesh continues to be a source of anxiety for many, including those the government is proud to call its friend.

Now, the chancellor of India's flagship Nalanda University and former Singapore foreign minister George Yeo says he is troubled by the nervousness in India over consumption of beef.

In his foreword to the book 'India Rising', which will be released later this week by former Singapore PM Goh Chok Tong, Yeo reveals that he refused to follow the advice of the son of a Congress functionary who asked him to remove his picture from his Facebook account showing him eating Pho (Vietnamese beef noodles) with his wife. According to Yeo, the Congress member's son felt it would elicit a negative response in India to his role as the chancellor of Nalanda Universit y.

"I knew he meant well. I did not follow his advice, of course, but his nervousness troubled me," he says in the book by senior Straits Times journalist Ravi Velloor.

Yeo describes the Congress member's son as a good friend and "certainly no extremist".

Yeo's own book 'George Yeo on Bonsai, Banyan and the Tao' was recently released in India by foreign minister Sushma Swaraj. Releasing the book, Swaraj said India was proud to have a friend like Yeo. Also a member of Vatican's Council for the Economy, Yeo was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2012.

Not long ago, the government's chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian had said he would lose his job if he were to talk about the beef ban. His blithe comment was in response to a query about what impact the ban on cow meat would have on India's rural economy.

The book 'India Rising' chronicles significant developments over the past decade in India, leading up to the rise of Modi and, as Yeo says, expresses fresh hopes but also new fears under Modi as PM.

While agreeing with the author's contention that India was now in a strategic sweet spot, Yeo says India is more than just a political and economic play.

Talking about how India did not experience the kind of mass killings which China and Europe did, Yeo says the tolerance, even celebration, of diversity in Indian civilisation is an important reason for India's less violent ways . "For as long as India stays centred in this tradition, its contribution to the world will be much greater than just the political and economic," he says.

Yeo also compliments Modi, saying the PM has left many surprised by the brilliance of his foreign policy, keeping all external forces in dynamic balance. Singapore's foreign minister for seven years, Yeo recalled how Modi, knowing that he was going to visit Japan and the US before visiting China, decided to first take President Xi Jinping's congratulatory call after being sworn in.