‘Narendra Modi, a prime asset for India’: Shashi Tharoor praises the PM

Just days after admitting to differences of opinion with the Congress leadership over Operation Sindoor openly for the first time, the party’s senior leader Shashi Tharoor appeared to double down on his position, praising not just the military action and the government’s diplomatic outreach, but also heaping praise on Narendra Modi. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s energy, dynamism and willingness to engage remains a prime asset for India on the global stage, but deserves greater backing,” Tharoor wrote in a newspaper column.

The column, which appeared in <The Hindu> earlier today and where he highlighted the success of the diplomatic outreach missions, contained many points that will upset the party leadership. It mentions, among other things, how Operation Sindoor presented ‘a critical juncture in our nation’s foreign policy’, how it was ‘decisive’, and how the diplomatic outreach that followed was ‘equally vital’.

Tharoor has been viewed with some skepticim within the party for some time. One can date it right back to the time when he became one of the signatories (a group that would be dubbed G-23) to a letter demanding more democracy within the party. His expressing of views that have sometimes seemed to be in variance with those held by other seniors in the party haven’t helped. The differences have magnified since Tharoor agreed to head one of the government’s outreach delegations (to the US, Panama, Guyana, Brazil and Colombia), even though his name hadn’t originally been suggested by his party, and praised Operation Sindoor. At one of the outreach events, in Panama, when Tharoor had spoken about how the government for the first time, ‘breached the LoC between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launch pad… (after) the Uri strike in September 2016’, it led to a furor back home within the party. One would have expected the job profile of being a member such a delegation, and in fact heading it, would involve defending the government’s actions, but the attacks from his party colleagues were severe, with one leader, Udit Raj, dubbing Tharoor BJP’s super spokesperson on X, and Congress’ senior leader and communications head Jairam Ramesh retweeting that post.

After his return, Tharoor appears to have been sidelined. He was conspicuously absent from the Nilambur bypoll campaign, which the Congress candidate Aryadan Shoukath has just won. When Tharoor was asked about it, he said that he hadn’t been invited, although the state unit of the party has passed it off as a ‘communication gap’.

Tharoor’s latest column, and the direct praise of Modi, won’t endear him to the detractors within his party anytime soon.