India, Sept. 22 -- Union home minister Amit Shah has said India's foreign policy "has been given a spine" by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and it lacked one before that.

"When historians will compare different PMs, I strongly believe they'll find that the biggest achievements have been under PM Modi's tenure. India's foreign policy was spineless earlier. It's Modi who gave a spine to it," Shah said in an interview that was largely about Modi's legacy and marked the PM's 75th birthday that was last week.

Amit Shah was asked to pointedly compare Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first and so far the longest-serving PM, and Narendra Modi, whose continuous tenure of 11 years and counting is the second longest.

Shah said that, earlier, diplomacy wo...