"Felt His Curious Astral Energy": Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson On Meeting Narendra Modi For The First Time

Former United Kingdom prime minister Boris Johnson has said in his memoir that when he first met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in London he felt "his curious astral energy".

He also recalled being advised by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) during his 2012 trade trip to India as London mayor not to meet Modi “because he was a Hindu nationalist.”

However, when Johnson finally met Modi for the first time outside City Hall a few years later, “he raised my arm and chanted something in Hindi, and I felt his curious astral energy," Johnson writes in his book “Unleashed”.

Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Johnson visited India in April 2022 with the aim of encouraging India to reduce its dependence on Russia.

Johnson described the reception he received in India as “like an orchestrated orgy of state-sponsored Beatlemania.”

The former UK PM said he understood “the reasons for India’s post-war non-alignment with the West” and “India’s dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.”

“But I wondered if it was not time for a modulation, a rethink. Did India really want to be aligned with this pair of autocracies,” he writes, referring to Russia and China, Times of India reported.

According to the memoir, Johnson pointed out to the Indians that “Russian missiles were turning out to be less accurate statistically” than his first serve at tennis.

“Did they really want to keep Russia as their main supplier of military hardware?” he said.

He concluded that the trip was a success.

“Overcoming the qualms of the MoD, who are always worried about India’s closeness to Russia, we agreed to work together on all kinds of military technology, from submarines to helicopters to marine propulsion units,” he writes.

Johnson also disclosed a private conversation he had with Queen Elizabeth in September 2022 at Balmoral two days before she died.

He told her about the “well-known” difficulties the UK govt was having in persuading India to “take a tougher line with the Russians” on the Ukraine war and she told him something Jawaharlal Nehru had told her in the 1950s.

He discussed with her the “well-known” challenges faced by the UK government in persuading India to “take a tougher line with the Russians” on the Ukraine war.

The Queen recounted a conversation with Jawaharlal Nehru from the 1950s.

“‘He told me that India will always side with Russia, and that some things will never change. They just are,’” he quotes the Queen as saying.

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