India Makes Its Case At The UN: EAM Jaishankar Delivers National Statement
Jaishankar told the General Assembly that Bharat's right to self-defence against terrorism 'will be exercised', in a speech that also put the Gulf shipping crisis at the centre of India's case for a reordered world
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| Screengrab of UN address; Via: @sidhant on X |
"Yesterday, a serial practitioner of terrorism misrepresented facts before this Assembly," S Jaishankar told the general debate at the assembly's 81st session in New York. Arguments had been invoked, he said, to normalise terrorism and claim immunity from its consequences. "That will not stand."
He did not name Pakistan, whose prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, had addressed the assembly the previous day. But the reference was unmistakable, and Indian news agencies reported it as a rebuke of Islamabad.
The sharpest line came next. "Friendship and goodwill cannot co-exist with terrorism," Jaishankar said. "And understandings premised on that will naturally be called into question." He did not specify which understandings he meant, and the speech offered no further detail.
The remarks follow a sustained deterioration between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. In May 2025, India launched Operation Sindoor, striking what it described as terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, after an attack at Pahalgam in India's Kashmir killed 26 civilians.
For most of its length, however, the address was not about Pakistan. It was an argument about how the international system is breaking down, delivered by a country positioning itself as spokesman for the developing world.
Jaishankar's organising phrase was "a weaponization of everything". A mindset of extreme competition had set in, he said, undermining institutions and creating chokepoints that ran from finance to market access, supply chains and technology. Resources and connectivity, he argued, have become instruments of leverage. The consequence is that countries are now focused on de-risking and diversifying, and that the prevailing atmosphere is no longer one of trust.
The developing world, he said, faces what he called a 4F crisis, in the security of food, fuel, fertiliser and finance. He cited a Super El Nino, fertiliser shortages and obstacles to grain movement. The right of poorer countries to industrialise, he added, was being undermined by non-market practices and market denial, and the misuse of artificial intelligence was sharpening bias.
Much of that case rests on a maritime crisis that has dominated this year and which India has made its own.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil, has been severely disrupted since the United States and Israel began strikes on Iran on 28 February. Iran responded by restricting passage through the strait, attacking merchant vessels and laying mines. Ships have been struck repeatedly through the year, seafarers have been killed, and the International Maritime Organization said in July that about 6,000 seafarers remained stranded in the Gulf.
India is the world's largest supplier of merchant crews, and Indian seafarers are among the dead. "The targeting of commercial shipping and seafarers, transiting international waterways, is simply unacceptable," Jaishankar told the assembly, calling on all parties to exercise restraint and ensure uninterrupted flows of energy and commerce.
On Friday, the day before the speech, India and Liberia launched a Group of Friends on the Safety and Security of Shipping and Seafarers at the UN, an informal, voluntary grouping co-chaired by the two countries. Representatives of 25 states attended the first meeting, among them Russia, Germany and Japan. The pairing is deliberate: India supplies the crews, Liberia hosts the world's largest ship registry by tonnage. Speaking at the launch, Jaishankar said attacks on merchant vessels were legally and morally indefensible, noted that around two million people work at sea, and said shipping carries four-fifths of global trade, worth $35 trillion last year.
On Ukraine, now in its fifth year, Jaishankar repeated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's formulation that endless war must give way to an end to war, and said India supported current peace initiatives. On the Middle East, he said durable peace required a two-state solution, and that India was contributing humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
The speech also set out what India believes it brings. He cited 600 Indian development projects across 78 countries, the country's digital public infrastructure, and its role in the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and the Global Biofuels Alliance. Indian contingents, he said, serve in nine of the UN's eleven peacekeeping mandates, and an Indian woman combat helicopter pilot received the UN's 2025 Military Gender Advocate of the Year award.
Delivering 🇮🇳’s statement at the 81st session of the @UN General Assembly. #UNGA81 https://t.co/IcMcmTNNAc
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 26, 2026
On artificial intelligence, he said India had hosted an AI Impact Summit in February and believed every country had the right to build its own models and deployment strategies.
The closing argument was about power. The post-1945 order is giving way, Jaishankar said, and much of today's turbulence comes from the difficulty of that adjustment. Peace in a pluralistic order, he argued, requires civil conversation, broad consultation and transparent decision-making, and large sections of humanity cannot be excluded from it. The case for reformed multilateralism, he said, grows stronger each day.
He paid tribute to Secretary General António Guterres, whose second term ends this year, praising in particular his support for Mission LiFE, India's climate lifestyle initiative.
Jaishankar closed by pointing to the lawns outside the building, where words attributed to Mahatma Gandhi are recorded. "There is no way to peace," he quoted. "Peace is the way."