Latest news with #KaranThapar
The Wire
25-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Does the SC Have the Power to Gag Ali Khan Mahmudabad or Has it Overreached Itself?
Ali Khan Mahmudabad. In the background is the Supreme Court. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute Now How has the Supreme Court treated Ali Khan Mahmudabad? Does it have the power to gag him? Or has it overreached itself? Should it have questioned whether Section 152 of the BNS applies rather than simply accept it does and hand the matter to a SIT for further investigation? Should he have been told to surrender his passport when clearly he is not a flight risk? And could the wide-ranging comments by the two judges have prejudiced the case? Karan Thapar discusses key issues with the well-known lawyer and columnist, Gautam Bhatia.
The Wire
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
Full Text: India is Getting Re-Hyphenated With Pakistan Because Under Modi We're Democratically Regressing
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Video Full Text: India is Getting Re-Hyphenated With Pakistan Because Under Modi We're Democratically Regressing Karan Thapar 11 minutes ago 'My worry is not that we are looking more like Pakistan. My worry is we are looking less like India, the India of our constitutional reach,' Ramachandra Guha says. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now In an interview where he discusses the core message of an article he's written for a paper, the well-known and highly regarded historian, author and political commentator, Ramachandra Guha, says India is getting re-hyphenated with Pakistan because for the last decade it's been regressing and steadily moving away from its founding principles. Guha believes it's the responsibility of the Indian people to stand up and assert their commitment to the founding principles, the Constitution and the sensible conventions established over the last seven decades. This is the full text of the interview, transcribed by Parvani Baroi. Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. In an article that is written today for the Kolkata paper, The Telegraph, my guest believes that India is in danger of becoming re-hyphenated with Pakistan. And this is mainly because it's regressed and moved away from its founding principles. Those are serious concerns that deserve to be discussed and better understood. Joining me now to explain his thinking and his fears is the well-known historian of modern India, the author of multiple books and a widely read public commentator Ramachandra Guha. Ram Guha, in the article you've written today for the Kolkata paper The Telegraph, you argue that India is in danger of becoming re-hyphenated with Pakistan because it has regressed and moved away from its founding principles. That's the subject I want to discuss with you. First, let's start with why you believe India is in danger of being re-hyphenated. In the first instance, it's to do with Donald Trump's comments and tweets. Can you explain? Ramachandra Guha: Yes, Karan. To explain how Donald Trump's comments and tweets are a substantial departure from how past American presidents have viewed us, one needs a little bit of history. So during the Cold War and particularly around the time of the '65 and '71 conflicts between India and Pakistan, there was a kind of India and Pakistan being seen as very different because they were fighting over Kashmir. The Americans were supporting Pakistan energetically. We were kind of non-aligned but striking alliances from our side. But from the early '90s it became clear that India was indeed different from Pakistan in several respects. One, that although they were an Islamic republic, we were not a Hindu state. Second, we held regular elections whereas their elections were decided by generals. Third, from the '90s we started growing economically quite substantially and in 1998 you will recall President Clinton came here and he spent 5 days in India and 5 hours in Pakistan which was a starkly visible sign that India and Pakistan were being de-hyphenated and India was being regarded as much more important economically, politically and indeed morally by the most powerful country in the world. Now move to the presidents after Clinton – Bush and Obama. You know not only did the relationship between India and America grow substantially economically and politically, you will recall the extraordinary praise that Bush and Obama levelled particularly Obama but also Bush on Dr. Manmohan Singh as a statesman among statesmen and so on. So there was a radical de-hyphenation and now there was some talk, possibly premature talk but certainly some talk, of India instead being hyphenated with China. Now this is a radical departure in that context. Now this morning, Karan, I read a report after my article was sent to the press in the PTI, an Indian news agency, which said Trump has said seven times that he will mediate between India and Pakistan, not just once. He has called them both great nations. He has said they are both equal friends of his. They will come to the table and negotiate under his allegedly benign supervision. Now Trump is, we know, whimsical, erratic, vain. Nonetheless, he is the president of the most powerful and the richest country in the world with which India very much desires good relations. And hence even obviously in our eyes we should not be hyphenated with Pakistan. We are still a democracy. We are growing. Our economy is 11 times that of Pakistan. Our per capita income is twice that of Pakistan. At least where I live in South India: it may be slightly different in North and West India: minorities are relatively safe. So it may irk us to be hyphenated. But why is it that the most powerful man in the world who runs a country with which India has had such good relations over the last three decades and for its own economic and geostrategic interests, it requires India to maintain and deepen those relationships, why is this happening? So we should introspect and ask ourselves. Karan Thapar: Let me ask you this. Are you confident that this is not just the quirky idiosyncratic eccentric nature of Trump or is it in fact a conscious attempt to see India and Pakistan as equivalent entities? Ramachandra Guha: Well, one does not know with Trump but the fact that the US had to mediate and you know repeatedly claimed it has Bans and Rubio too, they also said that Kashmir will be discussed you know in a neutral venue. This is a clear violation of the Shimla Agreement. But more than that, Karan, in my article I also talk about the Financial Times which is arguably the most respected western paper in the world, generally quite sympathetic to India, and the Financial Times, this hugely respected international paper, ran a big story when shortly before the ceasefire but when the guns were blazing on either side between India and Pakistan and boldly, I quote the headline was 'Two Religious Strong Men Clash.' Who are these two religious strong men? On the one side, General Asim Munir, the head of the Pakistani army presented as a devout Muslim who aggressively represents his country's interests and the other Narendra Modi represented as a devout Hindu who acts similarly on behalf of his country. So there was another article which I also referred to in my column by the very well-known and widely regarded international relations historian Timothy Garton Ash where he says of Narendra Modi, he speaks of Narendra Modi's obsessive enmity towards Chinese-backed Pakistan. Now give me a couple of minutes Karan to explain how these representations and characterizations of Mr. Modi and India are so different from what in not just the Financial Times but the New York Times, the Economist, CNN, even whatever Spanish newspapers would have resorted to in the past. You know, would anyone have called Manmohan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, Deve Gowda, Narasimha Rao or even Atal Bihari Vajpayee a religious strongman? No. Would any of them talk of their aggressive enmity towards Pakistan? I think that's what defines them. Now I was reflecting on this and particularly religious strongman part if you give me just one minute to suggest that Narendra Modi particularly since 2019 has earned himself the sobriquet religious strongman. You know, the fact that he religiously presided over the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya as prime minister sent a sign that he believed India was a Hindu rashtra, that he has been repeatedly portrayed by his fan club supported by his party and his government in military uniform. I live in Bangalore which is not ruled by the BJP but friends of mine in BJP ruled states tell me that after the Pulwama attack and even before the conflict started there were posters everywhere of Modi in military uniform looming large and the armed forces rather small in the background, you know our proud and hugely capable armed forces. So he has presented himself as a religious strongman and clearly the larger ecosystem, the social media ecosystem of the BJP, you know is not really concerned so much with India's economic or political rise as what the Financial Times characterizes as an obsessive enmity with Pakistan. So these things should really give us pause. Karan Thapar: So you're saying two very important things aren't you? And I'll quickly sum them up for the audience. Not only is it Donald Trump in his tweets and his comments that is re-hyphenating India with Pakistan, but leading intellectuals like Professor Timothy Garton Ash or leading Western newspapers like the Financial Times are also in their coverage of India and Pakistan hyphenating the two. There the hyphen tends to be in terms of religious obsession. But whether it's the media, whether it's intellectuals or whether it's Donald Trump, that re=hyphenation is happening. That's the point you're making? Ramachandra Guha: It's starting. It's starting and that should worry us. One should act quickly so that it does not proceed. It does not become commonplace and not just the world but India itself begins to recognize what economically, politically, culturally and morally has separated us from Pakistan and should continue to separate us from Pakistan. Now this is beginning. Now people will say it's only a few isolated incidents but these are people of some significance: the most powerful and most important leader in the democratic world, Donald Trump, the most influential business newspaper in the world, the Financial Times. So we should start thinking and act so that we nip this attempt, the re-hyphenation attempt, in the bud and we self-correct so that this hyphenation is no longer possible in the future. Karan Thapar: Let's at this point, Ram, come to the second part of your argument. You believe this potential re-hyphenation is happening because India has regressed in the past decade. So let me start by asking you what do you mean by regressed and can you give me some examples of this regression? Ramachandra Guha: So essentially we chose a different path from Pakistan politically and constitutionally. So we positioned ourselves as a democracy which held regular free and fair elections and in which institutions like the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the press, and regulatory agencies were independent and autonomous. And the second reason we were very different was we gloried in our religious and linguistic diversity. Whereas Pakistan was not just one religion but one language which is why Bangladesh separated from Pakistan because the West Pakistanis imposed Urdu on East Pakistan. Now in the last decade clearly we have been less than robust, less than committed in our upholding of democratic procedure. We still hold elections but the election commission generally schedules them when the ruling party wants. The media is totally compromised. The regulatory and investigative agencies are utterly partisan. Our governors in opposition-ruled states are undermining our federal structure. So our democratic credibility has been eroded in multiple ways. I could give other examples and even what disturbed me in my view because you know I am a passionate believer in secularism, pluralism and also linguistic diversity has been this attempt to impose a kind of Hindu naturalness to how Indians should think, you know to make us believe that we are essentially a Hindu state in which others who are not Hindus live at our mercy, and again there are multiple examples. There's the press, there's the stigmatization, there are the lynchings, there's even you know as I say in my article the symbolic value of having a very brave and exemplary Muslim female officer as one of our spokespersons was quickly dissipated by one minister in Madhya Pradesh insinuating that we chose Husna Ara because she was the sister of a terrorist, whatever that might mean. After that he belatedly apologized but the government has not acted against him. The BJP has not acted against him. Not only that, to compound matters, the deputy chief minister of Madhya Pradesh yesterday said that the Indian army has prostrated itself before Narendra Modi. So you know the Pakistani army can prostrate itself before General Munir. But what does this say about us if a senior BJP leader is claiming this? So our democratic and pluralistic credentials have been eroded over the last decade and that's quite starkly visible to a nonpartisan observer. So we should not simply keep on parroting the claims we are the mother of democracy. We are an entirely secular and plural society when the fact is we are less plural, less secular and less democratic than we were a decade ago. Karan Thapar: In fact, you sum this up when you point out that there has been a steady rise of authoritarianism and majoritarianism in India. That is a comparison with Pakistan because it suggests that we are increasingly and steadily becoming like Pakistan. Ramachandra Guha: Yeah, absolutely. But I'll add one caveat. I'm a historian. So I tend to look at things in the long picture. I also don't live in Delhi. I live in South India. So I travel all across our country. So have a sense of the country as a whole. As a historian, I would say that this democratic erosion began with Indira Gandhi in the emergency. It was corrected after the emergency when there was a renewal of pluralism, democracy, federalism, the autonomy of institutions like the judiciary, the media, they thrived. And then Modi came and took us back to Indira Gandhi's era and even more. So in an earlier program with you a couple of years ago I think I characterized him as Indira Gandhi on steroids, you know. So I think this did not begin, the erosion of our democratic institutions began in the 60s and 70s with the Congress under Indira Gandhi. It was revived afterwards partly because we had coalition governments from the early '90s and now Modi has kind of brought back this kind of authoritarian tendency with a majoritarian tinge. The second thing I'd say and I think it's very very important to understand is to give nuance and complexity to our understanding of what is happening to India. It's also true that in several of our states run by opposition chief ministers, democratic institutions have eroded. There is a colossal personality cult of Narendra Modi that operates at the national level. But there are also dangerous personality cults operating at the provincial level of people like Stalin, Vijayan, Mamata Banerjee and so on. So it's not only the BJP. Let not this be seen as a defence of – it certainly should be seen as a chastisement of the BJP and Modi but this is not a defense of the Congress or of regional parties who in their own ways maybe in less significant ways but nonetheless have contributed to the erosion of our democratic and plural ethos. Karan Thapar: But you do agree that the more we begin to look and appear like a Hindu Pakistan, the further we are moving from our founding principles and the more we are likely to be regressing in terms of the country we promised the world we would be. Ramachandra Guha: Yes. But my worry is not that we are looking more like Pakistan. My worry is we are looking less like India, the India of our constitutional reach. I would put it that way. We should uphold and be true to our best and finest values which in the decades prior to the current conjuncture have sustained our democracy, nurtured our pluralism, cultivated intellectual open-mindedness and curiosity about the world and led to substantial economic growth. So we are becoming less like India. Karan Thapar: By becoming more like Pakistan, you're becoming less like India. Ramachandra Guha: Absolutely. And the more we become less like India, the more we regress and the more the world sees India and Pakistan as hyphenated similar equivalent countries. Ramachandra Guha: Yes. And again let me give a larger context. So that is not just India and Pakistan or not just the BJP. You know, the fusion of authoritarianism and majoritarianism is not restricted to Pakistan. There's Myanmar and Sri Lanka with Buddhist majoritarianism. Pakistan is Sunni majoritarianism but Iran is a Shia theocratic state. So if Indians look around and see how Iran which had an extremely articulate intelligentsia, which had promoted gender equality in the 50s and 60s, which had a scientific infrastructure, which had massive natural resources, collapsed after it became theocratic, or Sri Lanka which was a vibrant island society with very good indicators in health, education and so on. Once the Buddhist fundamentalists took over how it got entrapped in civil war and lost its way economically and socially. And Burma which is also Buddhist may be the worst of all. So there's a broader lesson for Indians to learn: whenever religion becomes fused to the running of the state, that's bad for the country economically, socially, morally, politically – not just in Pakistan but also in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Iran, Turkey, and countless other examples. Karan Thapar: All right. I think we've clearly established for the audience two things that were essential to establish at the outset of this interview. Firstly, why you believe there is a danger that we are becoming rehyphenated with Pakistan and what you believe are the reasons for that. And secondly, what you believe are the reasons for that re-hyphenation happening. I.e. the regression that you've spoken about, the fact that we are becoming increasingly less and less like India. We're becoming not necessarily more like Pakistan, but we are ceasing to be the country we promised the world we would be. And we promised ourselves we'd be. Ramachandra Guha: Absolutely. Karan Thapar: Now, at the moment, and you know this as well as I do, any suggestion of hyphenation makes the Modi government bristle. But that display of rhetorical outrage is insufficient and inadequate because it doesn't tackle the key problem that causes the hyphenation, i.e. the regression. Would you agree that that outrage doesn't tackle the problem? It's simply an expression of anger and frustration. The real problem isn't tackled. Ramachandra Guha: Absolutely. But my column which incidentally is also published in 11 other Indian languages is addressed not to the Modi government. It's not addressed to the Congress party or to the India alliance. It's addressed to my fellow citizens. It is addressed to the people of India who care about how India is perceived outside and inside and who – it seeks to make them understand the dangers of following the path of authoritarianism and majoritarianism. So it's not really a critique of the Modi government as a wakeup call to my fellow Indians. That's how I would see it. Karan Thapar: Absolutely. But tell me, how should we then, we the people of India, how should we respond to the regression which is the cause of the hyphenation that looms on the horizon? How should we as a people respond? Ramachandra Guha: Well, one reason could be to look at parts of India that have not completely succumbed. Now I have been spending in the last few years a lot of time in the state of Tamil Nadu. Now, Tamil Nadu has authoritarian tendencies because Stalin is a kind of a cult figure. But on the other hand, it has very good human indicators. It has solid economic progress. And most importantly, in my wide experience of traveling in all the states in India, Tamil Nadu is the one state where Muslims and Christians feel completely secure and equal and first-class citizens with anyone else. Kerala too and Karnataka too but little less so. Likewise in the northeast, you know, there may be areas in which this whole idea of India as a Hindu rashtra has not penetrated. Punjab certainly, you know, so where religious and linguistic – there are pockets in India which are not insubstantial. You know they're less visible in the Hindi heartland and wherever the BJP is in power including Gujarat, but they are substantial pockets of India where the social resource, the cultural behaviour, civil society and even the political climate is congenial to the nurturing of pluralism both linguistic and religious. So there are parts of India we can learn from. Sadly, there are few parts of India where democracy is reviving, you know, where you have a really vigorous autonomous press maybe in some areas of the digital space and brave independent YouTubers. One thing I should mention in my article: A heroic role in the conflict, in the armed conflict with Pakistan was played by Mohammed Zubair who debunked fake news for weeks and he was celebrated by Indians but once the conflict ended people started remembering he was a Muslim and death threats were uttered against him. So I think we should really think of ways in the past and in the present where we have lived up to our finest values and learned from them, nurture them, deepen them and clearly the media has a very important role here. Maybe we'll talk about the media later, but I wanted to say that the Delhi-based media has played a pernicious role not just during this conflict, Karan, but over the last decade in making Muslims a hate figure and vilifying them. If the last week people have noticed their jingoism and the warmongering, but over the last decade they have deeply polarised Indian society on religious lines and as one wit put it, the so-called national media which is in Noida in Uttar Pradesh not really in Delhi should be renamed Lashkar-Noida. I think that kind of captures their poisonous bigoted worldview very much and if they represent the mainstream media, God help us. Karan Thapar: You're making a very important point. A lot of the regression that lies underneath the hyphenation is because of the way the media behaves, the way the media covers stories, the way the media polarizes the country. But what about social media? Is that also not responsible? Ramachandra Guha: Yes, of course. Though there is push back on social media and clearly in the case of social media it is also – here the ruling party is more directly implicated because they have a very active troll army and IT cell which heightens, amplifies, exaggerates all this kind of polarization. So we have to step back and see where this is taking us and I think when the most influential person in the world, the American president, and reputable sections of international public opinion are referring to our prime minister as a religious strongman who's kind of equivalent to the religious strongman General Munir on the other side, that should give us pause and should act as a wakeup call. Karan Thapar: Now since, and this is my final question, since a lot of this regression has happened over the last decade since Mr. Modi came to power, would I be right in saying that a large part of the responsibility for correcting the situation lies with the government and lies with Mr. Modi? Ramachandra Guha: Yes, but equally I would agree but equally large part lies with the people of India because they have voted him to power three times in a row and now they should see clearly what kind of country Mr. Modi and the BJP are making. Clearly even our economy is stalled, but that I'll leave to economic experts to talk about in greater detail. So as I said Karan earlier on, my column, my anxiety, indeed my anguish is addressed as much to the people of India, to my fellow citizens, as to those who rule us because in my view it's very unlikely that Mr. Modi or his ministers or his IT cell will recognize where this poisonous polarizing hatred is taking us. Karan Thapar: And the last point is this. If we don't start to correct the regression, the world will be increasingly justified in hyphenating India and Pakistan and looking upon them as equivalent sort of societies. The fault is ours. We need to correct it ourselves first. Ramachandra Guha: I very much hope we don't come to being more systematically, more regularly, more commonly being hyphenated with Pakistan because we embarked on a very different kind of journey. As I said, our journey was characterized by democracy, pluralism, and intellectual open-mindedness. It led to substantial political, social, economic progress including gender. It was not an accident that, even if it was symbolic, we had two female officers in uniform which Pakistan can never have in their remotest dreams. Of course they can't have a Hindu officer, male or female. So we have, by staying steadfast to our values, by building a nation on these values of democracy, pluralism, gender equality and intellectual open-mindedness, we made substantial progress and why we want to abandon them – even if you want to abandon them fully, but if you start abandoning them that would start a process of decline that would hurt us and would be really sad and tragic for someone who's Indian. Karan Thapar: Ram Guha, thank you very much for coming to this interview and explaining your thoughts and concerns so fully, so comprehensively. Take care. Stay safe. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Interview: Is War the Only Option? 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The Wire
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
‘Trump's Statements on India-Pakistan Ceasefire Were Disappointing': Shashi Tharoor
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Video Full Transcript | 'Trump's Statements on India-Pakistan Ceasefire Were Disappointing': Shashi Tharoor Karan Thapar 42 minutes ago Shashi Tharoor speaks on the implications of and the unresolved questions left behind by the India-Pakistan ceasefire. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Donate now New Delhi: In an interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor who is a former Minister of State for External Affairs and also the present chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, speaks on the implications of and the unresolved questions left behind by the India-Pakistan ceasefire. Full transcript: Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. Today we shall discuss the implications of Saturday's India-Pakistan ceasefire and the unresolved questions it's left behind. Has this weakened India's long-standing traditional opposition to third party involvement? Why did so few countries call out Pakistan by name? Did the Indian Air Force lose planes and how well were questions about that handled by the government? My guest is former Minister of State for External Affairs and the present chairman of the parliamentary standing committee Shashi Tharoor. Shashi Tharoor, does the fact Donald Trump and Marco Rubio tweeted the India-Pakistan ceasefire and that the agreement was for a full and immediate ceasefire before India or Pakistan could confirm the news suggests that this was in some credible sense mediated by them? Shashi Tharoor: Yeah, I must say I found those tweets particularly President Trump's second tweet on Truth Social troubling at various levels. I mean I have to say it was disappointing in four ways, four important ways. First it implied a false equivalence between the victim and the perpetrator. It seemingly overlooked the US's own past unwavering stance against Pakistan's well-documented links to cross-border terrorism. You remember the whole Osama bin Laden episode from which we thought the Americans had learned a little bit about how much they should believe Pakistani denials. Second, it offers Pakistan a negotiating framework which it certainly has not earned. India will not negotiate with a terrorist gun pointed at its head. Third, it internationalises the Kashmir dispute, an obvious objective of the terrorists. India as you know rejects the idea that there is a dispute anymore. It's something that we want to consider to be an internal affair of our country and I think we've never requested nor are we likely to seek any foreign countries' mediation over our problems with Pakistan. And fourth it rehyphenates India and Pakistan in the global imagination and specifically in the White House's imagination. For decades now world leaders and every American president have been encouraged not to club their visits to India with visits to Pakistan, starting with President Clinton in 2000. That's the way it's been. So it really is a backward step that all these things have happened in this particular post. So all I can say Karan is that it suggests to me a post by a president who has not been fully briefed. Karan Thapar: But the truth of the matter is that minutes after President Trump tweeted, Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister publicly thanked him, and I'm quoting Shehbaz Sharif, for brokering the ceasefire. The Pakistanis clearly believe that it's been brokered by Trump and America and Trump himself talked about a long night of talks where he had mediated. So my point is the simple one. Has America mediated this ceasefire? Shashi Tharoor: I don't believe so. Not in the sense that I would understand the term mediation. Let me explain. Let's assume that the Americans called the Indians and the Americans called the Pakistanis. We know this for a fact because if you just look at Mr. Jaishankar's Twitter (X) record, he says when he spoke to a foreign minister, he's put it on his Twitter, right? That spoke to Rubio, spoke to the French foreign minister, spoke to the British foreign minister, spoke to the UAE foreign minister and so on and so forth. So there were these conversations happening. Now there's a difference between Jaishankar telling a foreign minister, 'Listen if the Pakistanis do this we will do this. If the Pakistanis don't do this we will not do that.' That's one kind of conversation. And then the foreign minister he's talking to calling the Pakistanis and saying, 'Hey listen I've been talking to the Indians and what they're telling me is this and this and this and you might want to draw some conclusions from that.' That's not a mediation. That is a constructive set of engagements. A mediation would have been if Jaishankar called the Americans and said, 'Listen we want to get this thing done with, would you convey to the Pakistanis please ABC.' That I don't think India would have done. I would be astonished if India had done that and I'm reasonably confident for what I know. Karan Thapar: Can I interrupt and ask how do you know what Jaishankar said or did? You're in the opposition, you're not a member of the government. Your own party in the shape and form of Rahul Gandhi and Mr. Kharge are questioning whether there was American mediation. How can you be so certain there wasn't? Shashi Tharoor: You are asking me for my personal view I hope Karan and I'm giving you my best educated guess. That is, that from a long experience of the way in which these things are conducted and have functioned. I know the way in which Indian foreign policy conducts itself and Jaishankar as you know is a career diplomat before becoming a political foreign minister. This is the way he would function. This is the way he would be trained to function, expect to function and would normally have functioned. If I'm wrong, I'm perfectly prepared to be proven wrong. But you've asked me for my view and I've told you this is my best educated guess as to how Jaishankar and indeed any Indian foreign minister who's properly briefed on this matter would have behaved. Karan Thapar: Let me put it like this. What happened on Saturday is very similar to Tashkent in 1965 when Cosian and the then Soviet Union intervened or Kargil in 1999 when Clinton and America intervene. This time Trump and Rubio were the ones who got both sides to agree to a ceasefire. This is the very example he gave of history repeating itself. Shashi Tharoor: But what happened in 1999? 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 called pressure on Pakistan. Possible. It's equally possible that Rubio could have told the Indians, 'You're a nuclear powered state. If 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. 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 were already very clearly not putting a foot on the escalator ladder. 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: Okay, 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 prescribed terrorist organisation for India to acknowledge that Pakistan had earned the right to have a negotiation. Karan Thapar: Why are you saying it? 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? 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 8:00 p.m. 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: Oh, well, 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 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 internationalised? Shashi Tharoor: Look, I'm sorry. This is exactly what I was objecting to in my very first answer to you, 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 the staff. Karan Thapar: Trump 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 offering 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: No, 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 is 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.' 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, mister. You need to back off?' 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 amour-propre, 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 at our head. We're not going to internationalise a 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 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. So, it's you, a member of the opposition Congress party who speaking out so cogently and coherently. Probably not on their behalf, but nonetheless, you're doing so. The government's 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 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 chairing 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. 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 which gives you… Shashi Tharoor: We will receive a briefing next week. We have not… 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 Sindoor, what has India gained from four days of kinetic action? It's a question former army chief general V. 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 who I'm very fond of and who I know well and I think very highly of. If 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 in the Lashkar compound while minimising collateral damage. We even chose a time where 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. Just 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 will never trust them again. September 2016, Uri happens. We cross 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 happened in September 2016. Second, we have Pulwama in January 2019. We hit them with Balakot. Now that's a second breach. We've not just crossed the LOC, we have crossed the IB, the international border. Third strike, Pahalgam 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 minimise 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. Karan Thapar: Now, let me come to what happens thereafter. Let me say it jocularly, it's a great shame that the Indian government doesn't have a spokesman as eloquent, as effective, and as in 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 favour. 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 Pahalgam 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, 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, there 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 Pahalgam killings. In my view, I wouldn't take out a life insurance policy on 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 Baisaran. 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. 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. 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 rumours as you said yourself in your question Karan. They are all 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, hang on a second. You're only partially quoting not the DGMO 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? That seems to be a possible implication. Shashi Tharoor: And that's why I think it's healthy for the government to come clean at the appropriate time. Karan, the ceasefire is barely held for 24 hours. So, let's give it enough time. Let's 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 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 and 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 shortsighted 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 am convinced that of course they will take us into confidence. Karan Thapar: Well let's hope so because bizarrely at the military press briefing held yesterday evening Ash 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: 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 and 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 lost? We know that four or five of their soldiers, wounded soldiers, were honoured 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. 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 Pravin Sawhney 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. Pravin said, 'The combination of the Chinese-made J10C aircraft and Chinese-made PL-15 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 realise that they're within what he called the missiles and radar's target envelope.' Now, 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 defense that would discuss that. I'm not a military expert, and I dare say that Mr. Sawhney 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 J-10 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 certainly be postmortems taking place. They always are. How much of that is to be made public? While you and I as Democrats might like 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 Pravin Sawhney is right would we gain in any way by advertising to the Chinese and the Pakistanis that we think that they are, you know, ready to steamroller over our Air Force . Of course not. Karan Thapar: Don't you think they already know it? Shashi Tharoor: No. Karan Thapar: Don't you think they already know it? Pravin Sawhney 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 , I want to underscore that point. If it's true, we don't know that it is. But should the Indian people be taken into confidence and told what the actual conclusion is whenever the inquiry is done? 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. 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 Kasab was caught alive and they had to admit he was one of theirs. They denied knowing where Osama bin Laden was until he was found in Abbottabad. 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. That's precisely why we treat their denials as worth precisely very very little. Karan Thapar: Now, are you worried that the world did not accept our position 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 the 22nd of April, I have no doubt we will be able to trace 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 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. Karan Thapar: Finally, as a former minister of state for external 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 shortlived ? Shashi Tharoor: No, I think the intention on our side is for the ceasefire to hold for all sorts of reasons. Above all the fact is, 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. We do not… correct. 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. That's in my personal view 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 Muzaffarpur 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 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 Pulwama, 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 organisations 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—let me finish. And secondly, doesn't it place our army in a permanent state of alert? Shashi Tharoor: Well, in the short term, they are on alert and 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 in Lajpat 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 were, 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 Pulwama 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 looney bin comes and blows himself up in a public spot in India, we will see that for what it is and 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 that behalf 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, this is not some 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 7th. 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: Thank you very much for the time you've given me. Thank you very much for addressing all the issues that I raised. Take care. Stay safe. Shashi Tharoor: Thank you Karan. All the best. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Eight Questions to the Narendra Modi Government After a Terror Attack, an Operation and a Ceasefire J&K: For Residents Who Live Near the LoC, Life Is Now a Living Nightmare Petition Urging Indians, Pakistanis to Reject Division and Hate Gets Over 5,500 Signatures Army Commanders Have 'Full Authority' to Counter Future Ceasefire Violations: Military US Mediation in India-Pak Conflict Could Be a Double-Edged Sword 'Losses Are Part of Combat', IAF Says But Declines to Share Details of What Platforms India Lost National Unity Cannot Be Celebrated Merely As a Wartime Gimmick Nepal's Civil Society Appeals for Restraint as India-Pakistan Tensions Escalate Opp Questions Modi's Silence on US Mediation Claims, Trade Threats in India-Pak Ceasefire View in Desktop Mode About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
The Wire
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
‘Pak Claims to Have Downed Five Indian Planes in Response to India's Strike': Dawn Columnist
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Security 'Pak Claims to Have Downed Five Indian Planes in Response to India's Strike': Dawn Columnist Karan Thapar 11 minutes ago Zahid Hussain, columnist at Pakistan's Dawn newspaper spoke to Karan Thapar for The Wire about India's military strikes in Pakistan. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Donate now Zahid Hussain, columnist at Pakistan's Dawn newspaper spoke to Karan Thapar for The Wire about India's military strikes in Pakistan. Hussain said that Pakistan's claim to have downed five Indian planes is its response to India's strike. He also pointed to Pakistan's claim that it has successfully attacked what he called Brigade Headquarters in Jammu, which India's Press Information Bureau has refuted. Together these two alleged developments, Hussain said, constitute Pakistan's response to India's military strikes on nine targets. Hussain said that this is what Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan defence minister Khawaja Asif were referring to, when the former said there would be 'a full and strong response' and when the latter said 'we will give a far greater response than their strike'. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Why Are Indians So Obsessed With Pakistan? It's Time Now to 'De-Hyphenate' 'Terrorist Infrastructure' in Pakistan, PoK Targeted, Says Indian Army; Pak Says It 'Downed' Indian Aircraft 'Pahalgam Attackers Communicating With Pakistan-Based Handlers, Our Response Proportionate': Govt Live | Pakistan Says it 'Reserves the Right to Respond' to Indian Military Action One Dead, 9 Injured After Unidentified Aircraft Crashes in Bathinda One Dead, 9 Injured After Unidentified Aircraft Crashes in Bathinda One Dead, 9 Injured After Unidentified Aircraft Crashes in Bathinda 'Hope India Responds in Way That Avoids Wider Conflict': US VP Vance Trump Hopes Confrontation With Pakistan 'Ends Very Quickly', UN's Guterres Urges 'Restraint' About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
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- Business Standard
Greaves Cotton sizzles on reporting multi-fold jump in Q4 PAT
Greaves Cotton surged 8.50% to Rs 205.50 after the company reported consolidated net profit of Rs 24.05 crore in Q4 FY25, steeply higher than Rs 2.56 crore for Q4 FY24. Revenue from operations rose 22.34% year on year (YoY) to Rs 822.83 crore in the quarter ended 31 March 2025. On the segmental front, engine revenue was Rs 523.99 crore (up 20.79% YoY), electric mobility & other vehicles revenue was Rs 169.29 crore (up 41.46% YoY) and revenue from cables & control levers stood at Rs 70.47 crore (up 7.70% YoY) during the fourth quarter. EBITDA soared 91.66% to Rs 46 crore in the quarter ended 31 March 2025 as compared to Rs 24 crore posted in the same quarter previous year. EBITDA margin improved to 5.6% in Q4 FY25 as against 3.5% recorded in Q4 FY24. Profit before tax surged to Rs 26.83 crore in the fourth quarter of FY25, compared to Rs 3.49 crore reported in the same period last year. On a full-year basis, the company reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 58.40 crore in FY25 as against a net loss of Rs 135.72 crore in FY24. Revenue from operations jumped 10.83% YoY to Rs 2,918.44 crore in FY25. Karan Thapar (Chairman), Greaves Cotton, said, "Our consistent progress across diverse business units is a testament to our strategic vision. By leveraging our mobility expertise and focusing on customer needs, we are evolving from a diesel engine pioneer into a dynamic provider of fuel-agnostic solutions with multiple applications while maintaining strong financial health. Meanwhile, the companys board has recommended payment of a dividend of Rs 2 per share for the financial year ended 31st March, 2025, subject to approval of the shareholders at the ensuing Annual General Meeting of the Company Greaves Cotton is a multi-product and multi-location engineering company. The company is a leading name in fuel-agnostic powertrain solutions, e-mobility, aftermarket & retail.
