Transcript: Shashi Tharoor on the India-Pak Ceasefire: Implications & Unresolved Questions

Clinton summoned Nawaz Sharif to Washington, read him the riot act, and he used his visit to Washington to climb down from a conflict that he had embarrassed himself gravely with. Now, this is not a question of mediation. This is a question of the United States telling one of the parties to back off.

Now, if that is the precedent you’re talking about, I’m perfectly prepared to accept that could have happened. That the United States could have told the Pakistanis, “Listen, the Indians have hit you very hard. They’ve destroyed a couple of your air base runways. It looks like they’re serious about continuing. Do you really want to prolong this? We think you should back off.” That’s not called mediation. That’s pressure on Pakistan.

KARAN THAPAR: It’s equally possible that Rubio could have told the Indians. “You’re a nuclear powered state. You aspire to be a UN Security Council member on a permanent basis. Back off now. It’s gone too far. You’re damaging your credibility.” That message could have been conveyed to both sides equally effectively. That’s what I’m saying.

SHASHI THAROOR: Look, I think India had conducted itself absolutely in a calibrated, responsible manner. It had said at the very beginning that it wasn’t trying to see the attack on the nine terrorist sites as the opening salvo of some sort of protracted war. It had said very clearly, we’re done. This is it. This is all we’re doing. Now, if Pakistan reacts, we will be obliged to react back to them. If they don’t react, we are not planning to initiate any action.

To my mind, there was no warning needed to be issued to the Indians. The Indians already very clearly not putting a foot on the escalatory ladder. Everything was in response to Pakistani actions.

Disputed Claims About Future Talks

KARAN THAPAR: Let’s go one step further. Rubio’s tweet also says India and Pakistan will start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. Government sources that remain unnamed, not a single government person has actually put his name to it, have specifically tried to contradict that and said any talks will only be about the ceasefire. What do you make of that? Was Rubio revealing more than India is prepared at this stage to make public, or is there a fundamental difference between them on this specific issue? Because I’ll repeat once again, only government sources contradicted it. Not a single government face was prepared to do so.

SHASHI THAROOR: Look, I mean, you know the rules of the game as to how much governments are prepared to say on record, how much they’re willing to say on background, and so on. But I am reasonably certain that India could never have agreed to this. Let me explain to you why, Karan.

For us, the question of granting a negotiating platform to the Pakistanis is a very big deal. Following Balakot, we have simply never agreed. In fact, going back following Pathankot in January of 2016, when we invited the Pakistanis to come in and join the investigation, and they went back and said, “oh, the Indians did it to themselves.” Since then, there has been no negotiation of any shape, size, or nature between India and Pakistan.

It is far too big a deal for India to grant Pakistan the opportunity to talk. And it would have taken a considerable amount of good behavior on the part of Pakistan, including, for example, some concrete action against a proscribed terrorist organization, for India to acknowledge that Pakistan had earned the right to have a negotiation.

KARAN THAPAR: Are you saying Rubio made it up?

SHASHI THAROOR: I’m saying what we have seen is the opposite from Pakistan. Rather than good behavior, we have seen bad behavior. We’ve seen the sending of a terrorist group. We’ve seen the killing of Indian civilians. We would never reward Pakistan with a negotiating…

KARAN THAPAR: My question stands. If you come up with that answer which you’re giving me, are you suggesting that Rubio made it up? Remember, it was in a tweet carrying his name. And he was explicit. He said that they will start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. He’s the Secretary of State of America, a country to whom we have extremely close, good relations. Are you saying Rubio made it up?

Concerns About Trump Administration’s Approach

SHASHI THAROOR: All I’m saying is it’s entirely possible that in these early stages of the Trump administration that there can be some missteps from Washington. It really would surprise me if such a thing were to be done. It would really surprise me if India said it’s possible. Pakistan has said that it’s entirely possible that the Pakistanis said this to the Americans and the Americans have agreed. Look, let’s wait till 8pm tonight when the Prime Minister is going to be addressing the nation. We’ll find out from more authentic sources than you and I are.

KARAN THAPAR: I think it’s unlikely that the Prime Minister will either confirm what Rubio said or specifically deny it. That would ruin relations with Rubio. The Prime Minister will almost certainly sidestep the issue. But the issue goes one step further. In a tweet on Sunday, Trump said, and I’m quoting him, “Additionally, I will work with both of you to see if after a thousand years of disputes, a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir.” How does that reflect on India’s traditional position that it will not accept third party intervention between India and Pakistan? Or now, is this the product of what you feared, Kashmir being internationalized?

SHASHI THAROOR: Look, I’m sorry. This is exactly what I was objecting to in my very first answer to you. Was that particular post by Mr. Trump on Truth Social? I get the impression that Mr. Trump has not been briefed properly or that he has not absorbed the briefing he’s got. Because on those four grounds that I spelled out for you, Karan, he deviated from established American policy with no good reason to do so. And those were the four grounds I was pointing out to you that really, it is not something that an American president, had he been properly fully briefed, he hasn’t yet got a staff.

KARAN THAPAR: He deviates from established American policy on a range of issues. Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, tariffs, China, you name it, he deviates. That’s the way he conducts his presidency. And so I come back to the question. If Trump has decided he wants to mediate and intervene, perhaps even personally, maybe he thinks there’s a Nobel Peace Prize in the offing for him, what will be our response? Will we say to Trump, “forgive me, no, we don’t want you” or will we have to more politely accept his intervention because we don’t want to damage relations? We are the ones who are caught in the middle.

SHASHI THAROOR: Now, I think we’ll very, very carefully have to explain to Mr. Trump. And by the way, there are sort of grown up and vaccinated people around him who can also explain it to him. He has a designated Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs who’s yet to be confirmed by the Senate, a man called S. Paul Kapoor, who’s partly of Indian origin and who is a very respected scholar on South Asia, who’s a teacher of strategic studies, who understands the nuances of all of this perfectly.

And I think once he has staff around him who’ve been confirmed and who understand the issues, he is bound to have people to tell him, “Mr. President, I’m sorry, this is where you have departed from our policy.” The truth is, in all these ways.

KARAN THAPAR: You really believe that his assistant secretary of state will say that when the secretary of state is not prepared to say it? You seriously believe that there are people in the Trump administration who will say to the president of the United States, “you got it wrong, Mr. President. You need to back off?”

India-Pakistan Ceasefire: Implications & Unresolved Questions

SHASHI THAROOR: Well, I think if they don’t do that, then I’m afraid Mr. Trump is the one who’s going to end up with egg in his face. Because to save Mr. Trump’s Amul proper, we are not going to stand an entire fundamental tenet of Indian foreign policy on its head. We are not going to negotiate with a gun pointed on our head. We’re not going to internationalize the Kashmir dispute by sitting at some neutral venue and discussing it with Pakistan and a third party. First of all, we don’t even agree there is a dispute. We say that it’s merely an internal question of how effectively we can integrate Kashmir into the rest of India. And as far as we’re concerned.

KARAN THAPAR: Can I interrupt? All of that would be very convincing if Jaishankar and Doval had gone public to say that to the Indian people. They haven’t. They’ve kept silent completely. Definitely. So it’s you, a member of the opposition Congress party, who’s speaking out so cogently and coherently. Probably not on their behalf, but nonetheless, you’re doing so.

SHASHI THAROOR: Certainly not on their behalf.

KARAN THAPAR: Why? The government silence doesn’t suggest that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

SHASHI THAROOR: Not necessarily. The government silence could merely suggest that they don’t want to cause offense to President Trump privately. And they’re conveying a lot of these things privately. Let me say one more thing about my basis for saying all of this. I have understood Indian foreign policy, I’ve written about Indian foreign policy and I’ve got a pretty good sense while sharing twice the Committee on External affairs of what the broad lines of our policy directions are.

Mine is what you can call an educated and informed opinion in it is not based on classified information. It is not based on briefings from the government. It is based quite simply on what I think our policy is and I might add should be. So as far as I’m concerned, if I’m wrong then some other people may also be wrong if they have departed from.

KARAN THAPAR: Not for a moment do I question your right to speak. Not only are you a former Minister of State for External affairs, you also happen to be the present Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External affairs.

SHASHI THAROOR: Which gives you a briefing next week.

Operation Sindhur: What Has India Gained?

KARAN THAPAR: Let’s move on. I want to slightly broaden the subject. I want to ask you this question. When you look back on Operation Sindhur, what has India gained from four days of kinetic action? It’s a question former army chief General Ved Malik raised on Saturday. No one’s bothered to ask him. Let me put that question to you as Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on External affairs. What have we gained?

SHASHI THAROOR: I’ll tell you what we’ve gained in my understanding. What I would say to General Malik whom I’m very fond of and who I know well and I think very highly of. He’d asked me, I would have said the same thing. I think what we have gained is that we have sent a very clear signal on the 7th of May. Not the whole four days. The first day our actions were calibrated, calculated and precise. We indicated we would not tolerate Pakistan backed terrorism on our soil.

We have conveyed the fact that nonetheless as a mature and responsible power we would conduct our response so carefully that we were able in fact to actually hit very precise targets including I’m told a very specific building on the Indalajkere Toiva compound while minimizing collateral damage. We even chose a time when there were not likely to be too many civilians wandering about in these rather congested towns. But at the same time we have conveyed that each time Pakistan errs like this our level of response goes up.

And I’ll just take you through four things Karan. Understand what we are trying to convey. 2016, January, Pathankot happens. The Prime Minister invites the Pakistanis to come in and join the investigation. The Pakistanis send their spooks into an Indian air base and they go back and say, oh, the Indians did it to themselves. That was the last straw. We never trust them again.

September 2016, URI happens. We crossed the first red line. We crossed the LOC by sending a surgical strike across, hit the base from which these guys came. Okay, Remember in Kargil in 1999, we had lost lives rather than cross the LoC in reprisal for the Kargil incursion. So the first breach happens in September 2016.

Second, we have Bulwama. In January 2019, we hit them with Barakot. Now, that’s a second breach. We’ve not just crossed the LOC, we have crossed the IB, the international border.

Third strike, Belgium happens. We don’t just cross the LOC. We don’t just cross the international border. We hit the terrorist bases in the heartland of Pakistani Punjab. We hit populated cities like Bahawalpur and Muridke. We do so carefully. We minimize collateral damage. But we are saying to them, listen, guys, the gloves are off. The more you do. We are sending you an unmistakable signal. We are coming after you and we don’t care where you are, we will come for you. Now, this is, I think, a very, very powerful message. It needed to be sent. It was effectively sent.

Unresolved Questions and Intelligence Failures

KARAN THAPAR: We’ll come to what happens thereafter later. Let me say jocularly, it’s a great shame that the Indian government doesn’t have a spokesman as eloquent, as effective and as command of the situation as you are. Because clearly, it’s the absence of a spokesman that can answer the press’s questions that allows the trolls to attack the government as they’re doing over the Trump tweets. They need someone like you to forcefully speak for them. They ought really to be asked by them to do it as a favor.

But let me come to the unresolved questions because they are equally important. And there are two in particular that I want to raise with you. First, we know that there was a serious intelligence failure that lay behind the Pahelgan terrorist attack, coupled with a major security lapse because the Baisaran meadow was completely unprotected. Now that the ceasefire has happened and is holding, has the time come to inquire into these? And secondly, do the conclusions need to be made public?

SHASHI THAROOR: Well, first of all, I think I’d be very surprised if inquiry hadn’t already begun. I think that it’s in the government’s own interest to know what went wrong and to track this down. As far as the time for making it public is concerned, the government will have to take that call Karan.

I mean, if I were in the government, I would say the same thing. I’m in the opposition. I tend to say the same thing. The government will have to decide. First of all, they may be lapses within our internal mechanism, the revelation of which would reveal vital information gathering techniques and sources that we cannot afford to compromise. And national security, to my mind, is something that warrants a certain amount of circumspection.

Second, we still want to track down the four individuals, three of whom have been identified by name, who we know were involved in the Palgan killings. In my view, I wouldn’t take out a life insurance policy in any of those characters, but I would like it if we could capture any of them alive in order to get to the bottom of who sent them, who trained them, who financed them, who equipped them and who gave them the chilling orders to behave the way they did when they killed the people, the tourists and Viceron.

So I want ideally the government to be giving that the first priority. And I’m hoping, I mean, I don’t know Mr. Doval’s modus operandi, but I’m hoping that this is very high on his agenda that we are still tracking these guys down. They’re almost certainly in Pakistan, but it doesn’t matter. We have to find out where they are, to find out where they’re hiding. We have to flush them out and we have to get them. Ideally, we should bring them to justice. Failing that, I’m afraid we’ll have to take other kinds of extreme action. But the fact is these are unfinished tasks. It’s not that the crisis is over.

Reports of Indian Aircraft Losses

KARAN THAPAR: Let me come to something that’s much more important. How do you view reports that Pakistan has shot down Indian planes? First, the Hindu carried a tweet citing Indian officials accepting that three planes had possibly been shot down. Then Reuters carried a report citing two US officials claiming two planes had been shot down. Finally, CNN carried a report citing a French intelligence official claiming at least one Rafale plane had been shot down and that they were checking to see whether there were more. As Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External affairs, how do you respond to these reports?

SHASHI THAROOR: Well, first of all, I think the committee has sought a briefing and it has been granted for next week. So it’s when we get that briefing that we will have an authoritative answer. Secondly, I do believe the government at some point will owe an accounting to the Indian people. Whether they do it in Parliament, whether they do it to a parliamentary committee, whether they do it to the mass media. I don’t know.

But at some point it’s not healthy for all these rumors, as you said yourself and your question, Karan, they are more mutually contradictory. Was it one plane? Was it two planes? Was it three planes? Was it the Rafale? Was it something else? You know, we have a fairly extensive flotilla as it were, in the air. There’s MIGs, there’s Sukhois, there’s Mirages and there’s Rafale. So in fact there’s a whole range of aircraft that could have been affected. All I was reassured to see in yesterday’s statement from the MoD was that all the pilots are back home safe. So if at all.

KARAN THAPAR: Hang on a second, you’re only partially quoting not the DMGO, but the DGAO, that’s Director General Air Operations, Air Marshal Bharti. I’m going to quote precisely what he said because I think a partial quotation is unfair to the audience. His words were, “Losses are a part of combat.” I’ll repeat that again. “Losses are a part of combat.” And then he added, “as for details, I would not like to comment on that because we are still in a combat situation. All I can say is all our pilots are back safe.” And to my mind, and I’m now asking you this as a question, is that an admission that planes were lost but the pilots are safe?

SHASHI THAROOR: That seems to be a possible implication. And that’s why I think it’s healthy for the government to come clean at the appropriate time. The ceasefire is barely held for 24 hours. So let’s give it enough time. Let the government have the… Let the government come to the decision of when it should go public. We don’t want to undermine the morale of our armed forces in any shape or form.

But I think the widespread implication is obviously that a, we lost perhaps one aircraft, perhaps more, that we lost them on our side of the border, perhaps to incoming missile fire from the other side and that the pilots ejected to safety in Indian territory. Those would seem to be reasonable conclusions that one could draw from the statement. But I for one am not planning to repeat any such conclusion until and unless I know from the government authoritatively what the exact numbers and circumstances are.

KARAN THAPAR: That’s the key issue we need to hear from our government authoritatively. And the government has a duty, responsibility to speak to the Indian people because we are a democracy. The Prime Minister claims we are the mother of democracy. He boasts we are the biggest in the world.

Now six days have passed since the first reports that Pakistan has shot down Indian planes emerged during that period. The reports have proliferated. They’ve been broadcast by BBC, verified by CNN, by Reuters, by AP. Indian papers like the Hindu picked it up. The Tribune picked it up. The Indian Express picked it up. Clearly there are too many people picking up the story for it to be ignored and simply treated in silence or responded to with cryptic answers. And the question I want to ask you is this. Is it wise and discreet not to say anything for six days or is it short sighted and damaging of credibility? Which of the two?

SHASHI THAROOR: Neither. I think it’s a question of the government having to make a judgment as to when is the right time to do this. In the middle of an ongoing war, you don’t trumpet your own setbacks. That’s common sense. It would be bad for morale. It would be bad for the fighting spirit. It would also be bad for the public attitude of support.

But once the things have come down as they now have to apparently a state of calm, those considerations matter less. And I would certainly be hoping that the government will come to a conclusion at some point to give an accounting to the Indian people. Remember that we are normally a country where even if a training jet crashes somewhere and a pilot is killed, it’s in the news the next day. It’s not that we are a country that suppresses this kind of information.

I understand the desire of the government not to go public at wartime and I’m therefore prepared to wait patiently for when they think the right time is. But I’m convinced that of course they will take us into confidence, Karan.

The India-Pakistan Ceasefire: Implications & Unresolved Questions

KARAN THAPAR: Well, let’s hope so. Because bizarrely, at the military press briefing held yesterday evening, Air Marshal Bharti, who’s the Director General Air Operations, claimed that we’ve downed and I’m quoting him, “a few Pakistani planes” but refused to say how many. Though he added he knew the number. Now, at a time when the government and air force refused to speak about how many of our own planes have been shot down, even though the world is speaking about it and raising worrying questions about it, what do you make of this sudden surprise claim? It’s suddenly been thrown into the mix. And by the way, it wasn’t part of the formal statement made by Air Marshal Bharti. It was very much a response to a question. Which means that if the question hadn’t been asked, he’d never have said this. So what do you make about this subtle surprise claim? Because it’s mystifying.

SHASHI THAROOR: You know, your guess is as good as mine, Karan, and your guess is probably better than mine. Since you’ve been in the business of asking questions and eliciting answers for far longer than I have, all I can say is that as far as Pakistan is concerned, there’s no reason for us to believe that there wasn’t damage done there as well. I don’t have the details. You don’t have the details. And the Pakistanis have also so far not revealed any details.

It’s no accident really that neither side has gone public for the exact same reasons I gave you. In the middle of a fighting war, no one likes to admit their setbacks. But I think at some point we will give an accounting to the Indian people. And at some point I hope the Pakistanis will do so as well.

It is something we must understand that when we had this horrible incident with China on Galwan, we were the first country to reveal that we incurred 20 deaths. To this day, have you seen an authoritative statement from the Chinese about how many people they died? We know that four or five of their soldiers, wounded soldiers were honored by the Chinese at a public function. They have never ever issued a statement saying in the Galwan incident what number of casualties the Chinese incurred. Some systems are different. China is not a democracy. I would like to think that India as a democracy will come clean in due course, in the fullness of time and at the appropriate moment.

Military Capabilities and Transparency

KARAN THAPAR: Let me ask you, as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs one more question about the planes being shot down. I want to draw your attention to what the editor of Force Magazine, Praveen Soni said to me in an interview on Friday. The same logic and the same argument has been reported by the British paper the Telegraph. It’s also been reported by CNN and by other niche magazines. Praveen Soni said the combination of The Chinese made J10C aircraft and Chinese made PL15 missiles gives the Pakistani Air Force a distinct advantage. And it’s possible that Indian Air Force planes could be vulnerable because they may not realize that they are within what you call the missiles and radars target envelope. As Chairman of the Standing Committee, how do you respond to that possibility?

SHASHI THAROOR: Well, that actually would be a different Standing Committee, Karan. It would be the Standing Committee on Defence that would discuss that. I’m not a military expert and I dare say that Mr. Sarni is and therefore he may well know what he’s talking about. I follow the media as many others do and we do know that following such reports that apparently the stocks of the Chengdu Company that makes the J10 aircraft have shot up in value and the stocks of Dassault that makes the Rafale have dropped, which may or may not speak to how accurate the market is engaging in the consequences of military conflict. But it strikes me as a rather ghoulish yardstick by which to judge human life and the consequences of war.

Nonetheless, you know, I don’t think the people sitting in New Delhi, in the government are going to be oblivious to all of this. There will be certainly post mortems taking place. They always are. How much of that is to be made public? Karan, while you and I as Democrats might like to want to see a lot more of this in the public domain, I think it’s not surprising that in every government some things are kept confidential for a significant period of time.

I did think that the Henderson Brooks report on the ’62 war could have been declassified a lot earlier than it finally was. But I can understand why for some period of time, while these considerations are still active, India would want a certain amount of secrecy. So, for example, if Praveen Soni is right, would we gain in any way by advertising to the Chinese and the Pakistanis that we think that they are ready to steamroller over our air force? Of course.

KARAN THAPAR: Don’t you think they already know it?

SHASHI THAROOR: No.

KARAN THAPAR: Don’t you think they already know it? Praveen Shani is not advertising to anyone. He’s simply informing the Indian people, the Chinese and the Pakistanis and those who are in the defense business already know it. If it’s true.

SHASHI THAROOR: If it’s true, and that’s. I want to underscore that point. If it’s true, we don’t know.

KARAN THAPAR: But should the Indian people be taken into confidence and told what the actual conclusion is whenever the inquiry is done?

SHASHI THAROOR: I think we should be taken into confidence about whether we have lost aircraft, whether we’ve lost human lives, whether we’ve lost soldiers. I mean, that’s normal stuff. I think we should definitely do that in a democracy. After all, we’ll be sending coffins home to villages if that is true, and we may as well go public about that and give awards where gallantry has been demonstrated in the line of duty. But I am not calling, and I would not call for any confidential assessment to be made public that could in any way handicap our armed forces in the next crisis or the next conflict.

International Response to Pakistan

KARAN THAPAR: Okay, let’s come to one last issue. No country called out Pakistan by name. Is that because India didn’t have or because India didn’t make public convincing evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in Pahalgam earlier? The New York Times reported that many ambassadors who’d been briefed by Foreign Secretary Misri felt that India was relying on what had happened in the past to prove Pakistan’s role in Pahalgam. And to put it bluntly, they weren’t convinced. Is that why no one really called out Pakistan by name?

SHASHI THAROOR: Possibly because the fact of the matter is that Pakistan really specializes in denial. They’ve done so right from the very beginning of their bleeding India by a thousand cuts, they denied every single thing they could. They denied 26/11 until Kassab was caught alive and they had to admit he was one of theirs. They denied knowing where Osama Bin Laden was until.

KARAN THAPAR: Why is it surprising that they would deny their iniquity? It is to assume that they won’t embrace their iniquity. They will deny it. They have to.

SHASHI THAROOR: That’s precisely why we trade. We treat their denials as worth precisely very, very little.

KARAN THAPAR: Now did not accept opposition more readily. That’s the question.

SHASHI THAROOR: Having said all of that, if we capture dead or alive, and as I said, I hope alive, one of these criminals who executed innocent civilians and tourists on 22nd April, I have no doubt we will be able to trace the very subject, the very connection that Pakistan is busy denying, number one.

Number two, it’s like saying we have a serial killer in the neighborhood who we know has conducted 22 other murders. There is a 23rd that has all the same footprints, the same fingerprints, the same sort of signs. But he denies he did it. Are we to take him seriously? I’m sorry, Karan, that is my view of this. We’ve had a serial killer on the loose in our neighborhood. He has conducted one more killing, but he is denying it. And right now we don’t have the specific evidence to connect this killing to his earlier killings. Circumstantially, the evidence is there for a forensic case of law. We don’t have one.

If that’s what ambassadors want, well, fair enough. They can demand it and say they haven’t got it. But I’m proud that at least three countries, France, Russia and Israel explicitly said that they understand and defend India’s right to defend itself. They did not specifically say that they’re blaming Pakistan. True. But they said that India has every right to take action to defend its territory against terrorism and defend its people against terror. And that’s what India has done. Which by implication, I think is as far as they could have gone.

Future of the Ceasefire

KARAN THAPAR: Finally, as a former Minister of State, Foreign affairs, do you believe this ceasefire will hold? Or when India says any future act of terror will be a declaration of war. Does that suggest that the ceasefire is only going to be short lived?

SHASHI THAROOR: No, I think the intention on our side is for the ceasefire to hold for all sorts of reasons, above all the facts. As I’ve repeatedly told foreign interviewers what I can repeat to you, I think we are a status quo power. We have no desire to change or upset the geopolitics of the subcontinent. We want to be left alone to grow and focus on our economy and the well being of our people.

KARAN THAPAR: We do claim the right to take back the whole of what we call POK. So we’re not completely status quo. That’s one part of the status quo we want reversed.

SHASHI THAROOR: That’s, in my personal view, that is the kind of position you keep in order to have something to give away. I have no idea what we’re going to do with PoK which, thanks to Pakistani demographic policies in the last 77 years, is today 99% Punjabi, Pakistani, Muslim and not Kashmiri. Most of the Kashmiris who originally inhabited PoK are sitting in Birmingham or Leicester and not in Mirpur anymore.

So, I mean, the truth of the matter is it’s an overwhelmingly Punjabi Pakistani place. I don’t know what we do with it, but that’s not the point. The point is we have never lifted a finger even to act on that claim. And when we did take part of that territory in the wars of ’65, for example, in the war of ’65, for example, we returned it to the Pakistanis. This is not the action of a country that is lusting for Pakistani territory.

What we are very clearly all about is maintaining the status quo. We want the Pakistanis to leave us alone. So I have no doubt that India is serious about maintaining the ceasefire. I equally do not doubt that there are people in Pakistan, malign elements associated with the ISI and the military and those perhaps beyond the control of the ISI and the military who would like nothing more than to trigger another war and who might want to conduct a terrorist operation in India in order to achieve that result.

Which is why I hope that our people are doing their very best to maintain security at the highest alert, that we will never be complacent again, as briefly we were in Baiseran, that we will actually maintain protection for all areas and places, particularly in Kashmir where terrorists could strike. And having maintained that security, that we will thereby ensure the kind of peace that will enable us to grow if, however, there is a terrorist attack. I agree with you that India is very serious about taking it one notch above the 7th of May?

KARAN THAPAR: Let me pick up what you said in that answer. That there are organizations, possibly even partly to do with the Pakistani state that are looking to create trouble and mischief for India, and I’m putting it deliberately, euphemistically, who could easily, at the drop of a hat, launch another terror strike. In that case, was it wise to declare that every act of terror will be a declaration of war? Isn’t there a danger that we’re making ourselves hostage to every terrorist? And secondly, doesn’t it place our army in a permanent state of alert?

Implications of the India-Pakistan Ceasefire

SHASHI THAROOR: Well, in the short term they are on alert, so they’ll have to be. But on your first question, can we allow ourselves to be hostage to any madman who wants to set off a bomb somewhere at large but Nagar market tomorrow and let that drag us into a war we don’t want to fight? The short answer is no.

I think what we are saying essentially to the Pakistanis, those in a position to listen, is that if we see evidence of a strike that required the kind of meticulous planning, organization, intelligence work, equipment, finance and escape routes that we saw in Pelgam, which clearly shows a very professional imprint and very detailed reconnaissance and planning, then we will put two and two together and conclude that that came from official sources and we will react accordingly.

I think what we will also not do is if some loony bin comes and blows himself up in a public spot in India, we will see that for what it is. We will not necessarily drag the entire country into a war. We will obviously have people trained and qualified in Delhi to make that judgment. Not you and me in a TV studio, Karan, but people who study intelligence intercepts, who have a good sense of where something came from, even on Pelgam.

By the way, one of the suspicions I have is we do have evidence we cannot share with the world because it comes from intelligence intercepts. So I suspect we do have the evidence. It bears all the hallmarks of a very, very carefully planned operation. It’s not some, you know, couple of bearded fanatics in an attic who planned this. It’s been done very, very seriously.

But be that as it may, I think we will have to rely upon our government to have the judgment to decide when a terror attack is an act of war and when a terror attack is simply a misguided act of a crazy individual. And we will act, I believe, responsibly. India is a responsible power. Even on May 7, as I said, we conducted ourselves in a remarkably responsible and restrained way. And I applaud the government for that. And I hope that we will always be able to show that face of ourselves to the terrorist community.

KARAN THAPAR: Shashi Tharoor, thank you very much for the time you’ve given me. Thank you very much for addressing all the issues that I raise. Take care. Stay safe.

SHASHI THAROOR: Thank you, Karan. All the best.

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