Have started focusing on specific issues and outcomes rather than on parties as institutions, said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor while refusing to comment on the issues going on within the party regarding his stance on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tharoor, who was in Ahmedabad, made these remarks on the sidelines of an event at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on Saturday.
Tharoor, who recently led an all-party delegation on Operation Sindoor against Pakistan and has faced cryptic reactions from his party leaders for his praise of the PM, told ANI: “I am not going to get into political issues here. If there are issues to discuss, they would be discussed privately, and when the time comes, I shall do so.” In a conversation on ‘Diction, discretion and diplomacy’ at AMA, Tharoor said that he had started to focus on specific issues and outcomes “rather than on parties as institutions or structures of election winning”.
In a session with AMA’s Programme Committee Chairman Jainil Shah, Tharoor said, “The only reason to be in politics is to have a vision of a better society, a better country and a better future for your land; Otherwise why bother?… I have begun, in my own ways as a politician, to focus on specific issues and outcomes rather than on parties as institutions or structures of election winning and so on; I’ve fought and won four elections… I’m proud to say but at the same time, that can’t be the only purpose”.
Talking about his recent visit in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, Tharoor said:“In other places, we actually were able to get some very high-placed people to say not only that they respected and supported India’s right of self-defence, but they actually commended the restrained manner of our response, that we could have been much worse…So I would say that, by and large, they were all very understanding.” “But I would usually end by conveying that they should not be surprised that if this (terrorist attack) happens again, we too would do this again… And I believe we left everybody in no doubt about our feelings and our intentions,” he added.
Speaking about the Emergency imposed by the erstwhile Congress government 50 years ago, Tharoor said that it made him change the decision on taking the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) exams for a job in the foreign services.
He said that when the Emergency was declared, he was in Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy studying International Affairs on a scholarship in 1975. Tharoor said that he had a roommate who worked as a journalist and continued to “moonlight” as one and would bring “reams of telex stories” on the happenings in India.
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“It was deeply shaking and chastening to watch what was happening in India …I felt that somehow I really couldn’t imagine I could serve a government that could do this to our people and to our democracy,” the MP said. Recalling his first connection with Gujarat, he shared details about how both of his sisters were chosen as the Amul baby for the dairy co-operative’s advertisement campaign in the 1960s.
With PTI inputs
