The jury is out on what the scoreline of the global diplomatic duelling between India and Pakistan following the four-day military punch-up last month may be. But there appears to have emerged from the enterprise — after the first round — an individual podium performance.
The seven Indian delegations — MPs from multiple parties and people of eminence including former diplomats — have returned from their travels covering 33 countries. While there is little doubt that it was a team effort by the chosen 51, it may not be entirely misplaced if Shashi Tharoor, four-time Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, laid claim to being Galahad of the show.
With a white rose at New York’s 9/11 Memorial and with a waving flag at Guyana’s Independence Day celebrations, quoting the Mahatma in Panama, effecting Colombia’s retraction of condolences to the neighbour, and in telling Brazil with a laugh and a look in the eye that Pakistan had with common “friend” China’s help dropped the reference to the Resistance Front from the Security Council statement, Tharoor spoke the language of international diplomacy fluently and forcefully.
Tharoor, who was at the United Nations for 29 years and once pitched himself as successor-candidate to Kofi Annan as the UN secretary-general, was not offered by his own party, the Congress, when the Modi government went around seeking representatives for the global engagement.
But, furrowing a contrast with his party’s official line, Tharoor emphatically, outspokenly and repeatedly endorsed the Modi establishment’s military offensive post-Pahalgam, even without the asking. Tharoor’s overt resorts to making common cause must have pleased the Centre; it left his party bosses so displeased, they showed him the “Lakshman Rekha”. To little effect, it was apparent.
“Operation Sindoor is a brilliant name,” Tharoor posted on X in early May. He added: “It evokes the image, seared into our national consciousness, of the newly widowed bride…. The fact that Sindoor is blood red also sends a telling message…”
When Tharoor applauded the message underlying the briefing by a Kashmiri Pandit foreign secretary flanked by one Hindu and one Muslim woman officer, and when he gave interviews to ABC News (Australia) and the Riyadh-based Al Arabiya English, he used the “we” and the “our” and spoke in the voice of the nation, even before he had been enlisted by the government to do so.
When US President Donald Trump jumped ahead of all else to announce the sudden “ceasefire” after four days of worrisome military escalation, and claim credit for it, Tharoor was quick to cry out — “disappointing for India”, he said, and protested the “re-hyphenating of India and Pakistan in the global imagination”.
But when the BJP’s official X handle used the military offensive to hark back at “the UPA regime’s passivity”, Tharoor called it an “advertisement” that was neither “appropriate nor mature”, and urged the ruling party to delete it.
It is no secret that there exists a close to tantalising on-off frisson between the BJP and Tharoor. This is not the first time that the ruling party has sought the Thiruvananthapuram MP’s help in a cross-border situation, either.
In 2014, it reportedly sought his help to draft a statement condemning Pakistan for freeing Lashkar-e-Toiba commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who is widely blamed for masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
And in 2017, when Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Yadav was branded a spy by Pakistan and sentenced to death, there was a buzz that the BJP government had sought Tharoor’s help to draft the statement of solidarity that was to be read in Parliament.
Later, however, then foreign minister Sushma Swaraj dismissed the suggestions outright. She had enough talent in her own ministry to pull off the job, she held.
But time and again, the Modi government has entrusted Tharoor with key stations, be it making him boss of the parliamentary committee on external affairs in 2014 and 2024, or anointing him chairman of the standing committee on communications and information technology in 2019.
Back to Operation Tharoor. The last stop of the multi-party delegation was the US. Tharoor wrapped up his diplomatic offensive against Pakistan with a meeting with senators and Congressmen at Capitol Hill, interviews with the American media and a meeting with Vice-President J.D. Vance at the White House.
Later, he made it a point to disclose that he had not just talked shop with Vance but also discussed the latter’s Hillbilly Elegy and spoken of its resonances with those struggling to overcome similar challenges in their own countries.
And when the Pakistani delegation to the US, led by Bilawal Bhutto, cried “terrorism” and pleaded victimhood, Tharoor extended his sympathies to the “young man” who had lost his mother to terrorism but also quoted Hillary Clinton back to America and Pakistan saying “you can’t breed vipers in your backyard and expect them to bite only your neighbours”.
But the moment that stayed with audiences at home and abroad possibly came in the media conference where he was “grilled” by son Ishaan Tharoor, a journalist with The Washington Post.
He was replying to Ishaan’s question: “I’m curious though, on this tour you’ve been on various countries in the western hemisphere. Have any of your government interlocutors asked you to show evidence of Pakistan’s culpability in the initial attack? And what do you say to the repeated Pakistani denials of having any hand in the initial attack?”
Tharoor’s obvious parental pride and prodding — “raise the mike” he urged Tharoor Jr — took the edge off his square reply: “I can assure you, India is not the kind of country that would undertake a military operation without a very solid basis.... We are not that kind of country.”
(Put together with Bureau and agency reports)