Do we like S. Jaishankar?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A career diplomat with a clean personal record and a good climate-justice line, but a thin record on LGBTQ+ issues and a loyal defence of contested government positions.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar spent nearly four decades as a diplomat before politics. His career ran through Moscow, Colombo, Budapest and Tokyo, then ambassador to the Czech Republic, China and the US, and Foreign Secretary from 2015 to 2018. He then went to Tata Sons before Narendra Modi made him External Affairs Minister in May 2019, with a Rajya Sabha seat from Gujarat.
The big stoush this year came in March 2026. According to India Today, as relayed by Dawn, he said India 'cannot act as a dalal nation' in global geopolitics, responding to opposition questions about Pakistan mediating US-Iran talks. Pakistani ministers and journalists pounced, and Congress figures at home also questioned the tone and India's own past mediation bids. It's a slur-adjacent word for a foreign minister, and plenty of people called it undiplomatic.
On the harm test, here's the honest picture. Nothing from Jaishankar on LGBTQ+ people turned up in our searches, so that's a gap rather than a pass. On migration, he defended the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2024 as a way to 'open up doors for people who are in trouble'. Critics note the law is widely criticised for excluding Muslims, and he dismissed warnings that people would lose citizenship, saying nobody had.
On the planet, his line is firmer. In 2022 he accused wealthy nations of being 'not sincere' on climate justice and of repeatedly short-changing poorer countries. That's a developing-world argument about who pays, and it's a recognisable one, rather than climate denial.
A word on fakes: he's a regular target of deepfakes. BOOM found a March 2026 video of him calling Israel the 'most oppressed country' was digitally altered, and he never said it in his Parliament speech. So be wary of any viral clip.
The good stuff is mostly public-service: running a ministry through a very busy diplomatic year, and carrying the Global South's climate-finance case into rooms where that's not popular. There are no misconduct allegations or court rulings against him personally in the sources we checked. That's honestly the short list.