In an exclusive interview with India Today, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor talked about the Pahalgam terror attack in J&K, Operation Sindoor and President Donald Trump's claim that the US brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
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00:00the four-time congress mp chairperson of the parliamentary standing committee on external
00:09affairs and a former u.n under secretary general dr shashi tharoor joins me appreciate
00:14you're joining us uh dr tharoor uh you you've come out broadly in support of the modi government
00:22in its handling of operation sindur this has even led some observers to suggest shashi tharoor has
00:28become an apologist for the bjp and prime minister modi how do you respond broadly to the operation
00:37conducted by the modi government and its response to pakistan and those who are criticizing you for
00:43being seen as an apologist look there's nothing to apologize for as far as i'm concerned i'm an indian
00:49citizen first and foremost and as a parliamentarian as somebody who's involved in public life in this
00:56country my first duty is to my nation to my people to the flag uh party and other interests are always
01:03there but they will follow secondarily where the nation is attacked as it happened in belgam on the
01:1022nd of april and when the nation responds as it did on the 7th of may and subsequently
01:16i believe we all stand with our armed forces and with our government which is exactly what my party
01:23announced in the morning so i'm a bit puzzled kind of criticism having said that razeeb i think that
01:29indeed what was done was done extremely well that if you understand as as many of us did and i wrote
01:37articles immediately after the 22nd of april analyzing what i believe had happened and what the motivations of
01:44the killers were our response had to be calibrated and smart in other words it was impossible not to
01:54hit back because not to hit back would have given a license for future terrorist attacks to take place
02:01with impunity but in hitting back we also had to be careful not to send the wrong signal not to let our
02:09attack be taken as the opening salvo in a protracted war because it's not in our interest
02:16rajdeep to go that route our country is focused on its growth and its development the well-being and
02:21prosperity of our own people and honestly we don't need to be distracted by a long and unproductive
02:29conflict on our borders so when a terrorist attack strikes do not let it go unpunished send the killers a
02:36strong message and to their handlers and backers in pakistan but do not at the same time undermine
02:44your own interests and your own interests are your own growth and development and well-being and so on
02:50so to my mind that as i wrote in one of my articles soon after the belgam attack hit hard but hit smart
02:59and i thought the government did that very well it hit as you know nine terrorist sites which is a very
03:04important thing to do it not only did that in a very effective way it did so at night where honestly
03:12there's very very little likelihood of ordinary civilians wandering around so you are minimizing
03:17any collateral damage and the government went out of its way not to target in that first attack
03:24any military bases any civilian infrastructure any government installations i thought the message was
03:29was very clear i'm sure that our government was then busy calling all the world capital saying
03:33see what we did we have hit back on the terrorists but we're not anxious to unleash a broader war
03:40but but let's let me stop you for a moment since you mentioned our government spoke to where world
03:46capital said look we've conducted what you're calling a a smart operation uh a hit hard but hit smart the
03:54truth of the matter is you've got donald trump the united states president claiming credit for the
04:01ceasefire uh virtually uh saying that he's ready to mediate on the kashmir issue and importantly drawing
04:08an equivalence between india the victim and pakistan the perpetrator so when it comes to the world and you
04:16know the world well india doesn't seem to have got the kind of unequivocal support that we should
04:24have given the fact that we were the victim and pakistan the perpetrator how do you see what
04:29donald trump has done has that in some way reduced the effectiveness of operation sindhu look i i'm
04:37afraid none of us in india can be accountable for mr trump's somewhat erratic behavior um all i can say
04:43is i don't believe he was properly briefed i don't believe he understood the perpet of what he was saying
04:49because in saying what he's saying he made four major mistakes first the equivalence
04:53between the victim and the perpetrator as i pointed out second he talked about mediation
04:58india has never accepted or welcomed mediation and i'm 100 sure that we did not seek american
05:04mediation on this matter uh third the seeming internationalization of the kashmir dispute which
05:10frankly is a win-win for the pakistanis they want to internationalize a dispute that has been off the
05:16global agenda for very many years now they're pakistan's previous attempts when they were earlier
05:22a member of the security council non-permanent member to try and get kashmir discussed were
05:27rebuffed by the rest of the world and for mr trump to talk about it in this way was most unfortunate
05:34and then finally there is the re-hyphenation in the american imagination and in mr trump's own rather
05:41limited imagination of india and pakistan which i must regret very strongly because
05:47we had successfully established in the eyes of the world and of every american president since
05:54president clinton that you don't treat the two as equal or together we've said to them when you come
06:00to india don't stop in pakistan on the way there or on the way back we have no objection to you having
06:05any relationship with pakistan but treated independent of us we we don't want to be clubbed
06:09with them no so should we be sending a stronger message to donald trump you see should we be
06:13sending if you were the minister of external affairs would you send a strong message to donald trump or
06:19ignore what donald trump says in the belief that donald trump is not someone who observes diplomatic
06:25niceties so why respond to him well i think that mr trump indeed doesn't respond uh does not even
06:32respect the basics of of international diplomacy and discourse but i think it's important to brief
06:38the surround system around him i'm sure that our people have spoken in these terms uh to the secretary
06:45of state who's also doubling for the moment as national security advisor marco rubio and when they confirm
06:52an assistant secretary of state for south asian affairs who by the way is somebody who's a part
06:58indian descent a man called s paul kapoor who is a highly respected scholar and strategic studies
07:04analyst and who knows india and indian issues well and understand what we're saying i'm fairly confident
07:10that we'll be able to convey exactly why we were troubled by all of this it's an ongoing process i must
07:17admit the specific trump tweet was indeed a most unfortunate development and a set but he kind of shoots from
07:26the hip doesn't he we are not the only victims of this kind of impulsive uh behavior on the part of
07:31the american president you know so listening to you i get a sense that you're giving narendra modi and
07:36his government 10 on 10 or 9.5 on 10 for both the way they conducted uh operation sindoor handle the
07:44palgam attack and even handle the world diplomatically there are others who are questioning even in your own
07:50party whether uh mr modi has allowed kashmir to get internationalized whether to allow an american
07:57president to announce a ceasefire between india and pakistan is the is a is is setting a dangerous
08:03precedent uh am i to understand that you're giving 9.5 or 10 out of 10 to uh prime minister modi which
08:10is unusual remember for an opposition leader to do so and i think it's not my place to award marks to
08:16anybody let alone my betters let alone the head of our government so i'm not avoiding any marks for
08:20anybody all i'm saying right now is i believe that the matters that were under our control namely how
08:27to conduct this operation including its naming it its presentation of it the information briefings all
08:32that were very well done if you asked me whether mr trump announcing this feast why was a good idea it was
08:38a terrible idea but if you're implying that we could have controlled it or that perhaps a chief
08:43minister from another prime minister from another party could have controlled mr trump better well
08:48uh i'm very happy to wish you good luck in doing that radheep i i think this is a gentleman who
08:53escapes such easy control and therefore i don't know whether it's entirely appropriate um to score
08:59political points uh off mr trump's shoulders because mr trump is mr trump and i don't think anybody in
09:05any foreign country is able to control what he does and how he does it uh all i can say is that india has
09:11to make it very clear to the world to mr trump to the pakistanis and to the indian public uh whether
09:17we're going to do what mr trump implies we're going to do and i think it's already become very clear
09:21we're not we're not going to um uh give the pakistanis the benefit of a negotiation that they have done
09:28nothing to earn we're not going to give them the privilege of sitting across the table with them as a
09:34reward for their having killed 26 civilians in belga and a further 22 in punch and sent 59 to hospital
09:42as well their their behavior has been egregious to say the least and we're not going to be uh talking
09:48lovey-dovey with the pakistanis for a long time to come and as far as the the question of of
09:56rehyphenation and internationalization and so on let somebody try and get us uh to talk to the
10:01pakistanis and we'll tell them exactly why we won't you know i i think we can't judge international
10:08affairs on the basis of one tweet uh truth social post or one headline we have to look at a pattern
10:15of behavior we have to look at what follows next the reason that the reason the reason i asked you that
10:21was uh dr tharoor you've seen the way your party has reacted your party officially has called for a
10:27special session of parliament you're a member of parliament they've called a special session of
10:31parliament that's been reiterated saying we need all the issues underlying this ceasefire to be
10:38put up before parliament we need a full debate you clearly are saying there is no need for a
10:43parliament special session you seem to suggest that these are i'm sorry where you got that from
10:49i've supported the demand from the very beginning uh the party has every right to make such a demand and
10:54in fact i pointed out that in 1962 when we were at war with china we actually managed to have a
11:01debate in parliament a special session of parliament which the prime minister personally attended and
11:05responded to questions and in those days there was no anti-defection law so some of the toughest
11:10questions came to him from his own party and he was able to handle that so i think a parliamentary
11:15session is entirely healthy i've done my part as chairman of the external affairs committee in
11:20requesting the foreign secretary to come and give us a briefing which he's going to do next monday
11:25that's the prerogative of the committee and that's his duty and he's accepted that duty so that's part of
11:31the parliamentary accountability process that is important in a parliamentary democracy like ours
11:36you know so the reason i'm uh coming to these questions there's a sense that even on foreign policy
11:42issues in in recent past we've had a politicization that didn't exist broadly there used to be a
11:48political consensus on foreign policy issues which has broken down in recent years do you believe
11:55that this is an opportunity to revive that broad consensus that exists or is our politics so polarized
12:03that it's impossible to have that the bjp now is launching a tiranga yatra from today
12:08going across the country virtually almost claiming credit uh for for what's happened now do you believe
12:15that's a healthy trend do you believe that we should have a broad consensus rather than point scoring
12:20when it comes to foreign policy issues involving an enemy state absolutely and that's why i congratulate
12:26the congress party that in the very first day uh it said that we stand with the government and with the
12:32armed forces it's consistently articulated that message and if you look at all the major wars we fought
12:3762 65 65 71 kargira 99 uh the nation has been united and the nation has put politics aside even though
12:48there are legitimate questions that can be asked and which i believe are in the government's own interest
12:53to have answered uh spirit of knowing what went wrong that should be done but right now uh while the crisis is
13:01is abating i think it's in the only fitting we all stand together now i don't know about the tiranga
13:07yatra certainly i don't know if it's being conducted now would you support would you do you believe
13:12political parties should have these tiranga yatras uh or do you believe that we should be very conscious
13:18of not using our armed forces to score political points or is that inevitable no i think i think honestly
13:26there is going to be a tiranga yatra the ruling party or the government should invite all parties
13:31to participate in it because the tiranga belongs to all of us and not just to the ruling party for
13:37speaking so plainly on a variety of issues appreciate you joining me uh here on the news today thank you
13:43so much thank you rajdeep take care