India FM Jaishankar says Soros dangerous, debate needed on democracy

India’s foreign minister said the democratic world needed a debate on democracy, labelling billionaire investor George Soros “old, rich, opinionated and dangerous” for his comments on India that didn’t recognise its difficult path from colonisation.

In a speech ahead of the Munich Security Conference the billionaire investor Soros on Thursday criticised India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying India was a democracy but Modi was not a democrat. read more

He said there was “a debate and conversation that we must have on democracy”, including whose values defined a democracy as the world rebalanced and became less Euro Atlantic.

"He is old, rich, opinionated and dangerous, because what happens is, when such people and such views and such organisations - they actually invest resources in shaping narratives," Jaishankar said in a response to a question about Soros at the Raisina@Sydney conference.

"It worries us. We are a country that went through colonialism, we know the dangers of what happens when there’s outside interference," he added.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute think-tank hosted a one-day conference where Jaishankar highlighted in a speech the urgent need to "de-risk the global economy" as India took over the G20 presidency.