Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 1: Finding himself at the centre of a political storm within his party in the middle of leading a diplomatic mission to project India’s zero-tolerance stance on terrorism, the Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has said he would talk to his party colleagues criticising him for praising the Narendra Modi government’s strong response to the Pahalgam terror attack once he returned to India at the completion of his current mission.
Mr Tharoor said on Sunday that he was currently focusing on conveying India’s message on terrorism and would get a chance to speak to his colleagues once he returns. The four-time MP is heading one of the seven Indian delegations that have travelled abroad to expose Pakistan’s role in terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The Centre launched the global outreach in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s counterstrike, “Operation Sindoor.” Tharoor’s remarks praising counter attack by the Indian armed forces delivered during his tour of Brazil, Panama, and other nations, expose the divide in the Congress, which has accused the government of bypassing the party in these crucial foreign delegations.
When asked about his party’s continuing critique, Mr Tharoor, leading one of the seven Indian delegations sent abroad, told journalists in Brazil, “I think this is a time now for us to focus on our mission. Undoubtedly, in a thriving democracy, there are bound to be comments and criticisms, but I think at this point we can’t afford to dwell on them. When we get back to India, no doubt we’ll have our chance to speak to our colleagues, critics, media there. But right now we’re focused on the countries we’re coming to and getting the message out to the people here.”
Mr Tharoor’s remarks articulating the Indian position during the India-Pakistan conflict may have endeared him to critics, but did not impress his colleagues in the Congress. The Congress, which assured full support to the Centre in its action against those behind the Pahalgam terror attack, has now changed tack and asked the government to come clean on what led to the ceasefire and questioned what role the US played in it. Mr Tharoor’s remarks backing the government and the latter choosing him to lead an Indian delegation did not sit well with a section of the Congress.
Earlier, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said Mr Tharoor’s remarks don’t represent the party’s stand. The Congress also overlooked Mr Tharoor while suggesting party leaders’ names for the delegations. The government chose him anyway.
Mr Tharoor’s remarks in Panama created another discomfort among Congress, after which the party dubbed him “super spokesperson of the BJP.” “What has changed in recent years is that the terrorists have also realised they will have a price to pay. On that, let there be no doubt. When, for the first time, India breached the Line of Control between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launchpad – the Uri strike in September 2015. That was already something we had not done before.”
“Even during the Kargil War, we had not crossed the Line of Control; in Uri, we did, and then came the attack in Pulwama in January 2019. This time, we crossed not only the Line of Control but also the international border, and we struck the terrorist headquarters in Balakot. This time, we have gone beyond both of those. We have not only gone beyond the Line of Control and the international border. We have struck at the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan by hitting terror bases, training centres, terror headquarters in nine places,” he said.
The praise for the Narendra Modi government did not amuse his party colleagues. Senior Congress leader Pawan Khera started taking swipes at Mr Tharoor and tagging him on social media posts. In one of his posts, Mr Khera quoted a passage from Mr Tharoor’s book, ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India’, to take a dig.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP responded with a long post, saying he did not have time for this. “I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars; & my remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB. But as usual, critics and trolls are welcome to distort my views and words as they see fit. I genuinely have better things to do. Goodnight,” he said.
Sources in the Congress have now said they do not want to escalate the matter after Mr Tharoor’s “clarification post.” Last month, while criticising the government, Jairam Ramesh had said, “Our MPs are roaming and terrorists (involved in the Pahalgam terror attack) are also roaming.”
The four-time MP’s repeated praise for India’s “precise and calibrated” strikes on terror bases in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir has turned heads, especially as the Congress leadership, feeling increasingly marginalised, had not even recommended his name for the delegation. His backing and endorsement of India’s military response to the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 has not gone down well with sections of the Congress.
Speaking to the Indian-American community last week in New York, Tharoor said, “I don’t work for the government, as you know, I work for an opposition party. But I myself authored an article in one of India’s leading papers within a couple of days, saying the time had come to hit hard but hit smart. And I’m pleased to say that’s exactly what India did.”
Mr Tharoor, in a stern warning to Pakistan post the Pahalgam terror attack, said that no one sitting in the neighbouring country should believe that they can just walk across the border and kill Indian citizens with impunity. He also asserted that there will be a “price to pay” if someone does so, and that this is now going to be a new norm.
The Congress MP’s remark came during an interaction hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York with a select group of prominent members of the Indian-American community and individuals from leading media and think tanks on Saturday. Tharoor said that India’s message to Pakistan has been clear: “We didn’t want to start anything.”
“We were just sending a message to terrorists. You started, we replied. If you stop, we stop. And they stopped. There was an 88-hour war. We look back on that with a great deal of frustration because it needn’t have happened at all. Lives have been lost. But at the same time, we look back on this experience with a steely and renewed sense of determination,” he said.
“There is now going to be a new norm. No one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill our citizens with impunity. There will be a price to pay and that price has been going up systematically,” he added. He said India has focused on a very different narrative from some of its neighbours.
“Our focus for some years now has been on being the world’s fastest growing free markets democracy, attempting to focus on the development of our economy, our high emphasis on technology and technological growth and pulling large numbers of people from below the poverty line, not just into the 21st Century, but into the world and the opportunities the 21st-century offers,” the Congress MP said.
Mr Tharoor also spoke in detail about the horrific April 22 Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed, including one Nepalese citizen, for which The Resistance Front took responsibility and then retracted.
He highlighted the dastardly manner in which the tourists were singled out and targeted based on their religion, and the retaliatory measures taken by India through ‘Operation Sindoor’, which targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through precision strikes.
Tharoor underscored that India is “not interested, and we remain absolutely clear, we are not interested in warfare with Pakistan.” “We would much rather be left alone to grow our economy and put our people into the world” of the 21st century, he said.
“We have no desire to have anything that the Pakistanis have. Sadly, we may be a status quo power. They are not. They are a revisionist power. They covet territory that India controls, and they want to have it at any price.” “And if they can’t get it through conventional means, they’re willing to get it through terrorism. That is not acceptable to us, and that’s really the message that we are here to give all of you in this country and elsewhere,” he said.
Tharoor added that India was “determined now that there’s got to be a new bottom line to this.” He said over the years, India has tried everything from giving international dossiers, complaints to the sanctions committee, and diplomacy.
“Everything has been tried. Pakistan has remained in denial. There has been absolutely no conviction, no prosecution of terrorists, no attempt to dismantle the terror infrastructure in that country and the continued presence of safe havens. “So from our point of view, this is it. You do this, you’re going to get this back. And we have demonstrated with this operation that we can do it with a degree of precision and with a degree of restraint that the world, we hope, will understand.
“We have a right to self-defence. We’ve exercised that right. We have not done so irresponsibly… That’s really the message I wanted to give you all today,” Tharoor had said.
