Five Reasons Why Shashi Tharoor's Praise of Narendra Modi Could Not Have Been Worse Timed

The tsunami of praise and applause by the Narendra Modi government’s mouthpiece-in-chief on foreign policy, none other than the Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, has fallen silent in the last few days. But does the parliamentarian look like a master of bad timing, or worse, be parodied for being a fantasist?

Modi’s gung-ho foreign policy or what he would like to call the 'Modi doctrine' had been widely appreciated in the early years for his outreach to India’s vast neighbours (leaders were invited for his first swearing-in from Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif to Maldives' Abdula Yameen). Modi had been denied a visa to the US for a decade post-Gujarat riots and never visited UK for fear of arrest over the same issue, but world leaders expressed their willingness to do business with him when China, Russia, the US, France, and the UK all sent their envoys to deal with the new PM. Modi has swanned around the world in the decade after 2014, from the Gulf to South East Asia to Australia, forging alliances from BRICS, ASEAN, and SAARC, meeting a galaxy of big leaders, and business and industry honchos, signing mega billion-dollar business deals, many amidst protests of cronyism. He was feted with state honours and awards, some quite dodgy like the Philip Kotler Presidential award which had no citation. Meanwhile, the Norwegian committee called the Nobel Peace 'nomination' for Modi fake.

But in March this year – after a dizzying spree of hugging foreign leaders in over 75 countries, with over 90 trips, since he took over as prime minister in May, 2014 – came Modi’s true test of his successes in foreign policy post the terrorist attack on tourists in Pahalgam of Kashmir. By then, hundreds of crores had been spent on his foreign policy jamborees – reports reveal Modi spent Rs 258 crores in just two years between 2022 and 2024.

In the stunned aftermath of the gruesome attack, and as foreign ministry officials led by minister S Jaishankar, and the troika of national security adviser Ajit Doval, foreign secretary Vikram Misri and the Prime Minister's Office, scrambled to whip up support for India in denouncing Pakistan for sending terrorists across the border, there was a deafening and muted response from world leaders.

As India launched a series of air strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, targeting terror camps and strategic air bases, under the name of Op Sindoor, world leaders from the US, China, Russia, the UAE, Japan, even the UN, called for restraint rather than back the response from India, and called for stability in the region through peace talks. Only Israel, which is waging an illegitimate war on Gaza in Palestine, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, supported India’s offensive against Pakistan. And with US president Donald Trump’s repeated and unrepentant outbursts on how he has brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan to stop the hostilities, it simply threw India’s stated policy of non-interference by a third party out of the window, and hyphenated India and Pakistan as the same.

In this deplorable state of affairs of India in the world, Tharoor’s fulsome praise of Modi last week, calling him a “prime asset for India on the global stage…” due to his “energy, dynamism and willingness… (that) deserves greater backing,” as he wrote in a column in The Hindu, sounds misplaced and trite. Earlier, in March itself and even before Operation Sindoor, Tharoor had showered praise on Modi’s diplomacy saying he was wrong in opposing India’s stand on the Ukraine war two years ago, and is now left with “egg on his face’ for opposing Modi’s neutral stance. He also praised Modi for his vaccine diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic “reinforcing the country’s role in global health diplomacy and enhancing its soft power on the global stage.

Of course, the timing of his outbursts coincided with his non-inclusion in the Congress campaign in his home state Kerala, for the by-poll in Nilambur.

Is Tharoor being crafty or shifty as he defends himself, saying that his statements on Modi is not an indication of him “leaping to join the BJP,” but “is a statement of national unity, of national interest and of standing up for India”?

Here are reasons why Tharoor’s insistence that his praise for Modi is authentic does not sound credible or convincing.

Quad quagmire

The media last week was blazing with news of a joint statement issued in Washington by the foreign ministers of India, Australia, Japan and the US – the Quad – condemning the Pahalgam terror attacks in “the strongest terms” and calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice “without any delay”. It must have come as a flash of good fortune for Modi in the midst of the last two months of diplomatic gloom. Of course, the statement also underlined that the focus was now on four new key areas – maritime security; economic prosperity and security; critical and emerging technologies; and humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

Also read: No 'Pakistan' Mention in Quad's Pahalgam Condemnation

But critically, the statement which called for “the perpetrators, organisers, and financiers to be brought to justice,” and “urged all UN member states …under international law… to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities in this regard,” did not refer to Indian authorities, nor name Pakistan or any terrorist organisation from across the border as the perpetrators of the terrorist attack. This despite the fact that India had specifically retaliated by bombing terror camps of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in Operation Sindoor for the Pahalgam massacre.

UNSC promo

To the horror of the Modi government, Pakistan moved into the presidency of the UN Security Council, the power nucleus of the international organisation, for a two-year term on July 1. Pakistan is a non-permanent member of the UNSC – and it must be recalled that Pakistan got the position as early as January this year. To rub salt on India, it was a sanctimonious Pakistan which declared on its inaugural day that it takes the post with a “sense of purpose, humility and conviction to promote respect of law and multilateralism.”

To add to India’s misery, Pakistan secured key roles for 2025-26, in June, barely after a month of Op Sindoor, in two significant bodies of the UNSC – it will chair the Taliban Sanctions Committee, and serve as vice-chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the 15-nation UN body. It will also co-chair two informal working groups of the UNSC.

This is a blow to India not only because the Taliban government in Afghanistan was only one of two countries to wholly support Op Sindoor. As head of the Taliban committee, Pakistan will oversee travel bans, arms embargoes, and asset freezes against people and organisations associated with the Taliban if they threaten peace. To India, it is derisive that Pakistan, a country that has a record of sponsoring terrorism, was appointed as vice-chair to the anti-terrorism committee.

Meanwhile India is yet to submit its dossier on Pakistan’s inclusion back into the Financial Action Task Force, a policy watchdog that combats money laundering and terror funding. Pakistan was removed from the grey list in October 2022 after being on it since 2018.

Tharoor’s party, the Congress, was quick to ridicule the Modi government saying that the latter could not prevent Pakistan from assuming key positions in the UN and that Pakistan’s elevation came “despite all the bravado of foreign policy” displayed by Modi and Jaishankar.

SCO in a shambles

After the meeting of the defence ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on July 1, Rajnath Singh, India’s defence minister, refused to sign the joint communiqué as it made no reference to terrorism and failed to condemn the Pahalgam terrorist attack. The meeting in Qingdao, ended without a joint communiqué. Pakistan was completely let off the hook. Bizarrely, the draft mentioned the Jaffar Express hijacking in Pakistan in March and also to the political uprising in Balochistan.

Now, the SCO is a group of 10 countries that include India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran, Kazakhstan and some central Asian countries, but is dominated by China, and the group regularly meets to deal with security issues. The mention of Balochistan in the draft clearly points a finger at China’s affinity with Pakistan as Islamabad has repeatedly accused India of fomenting unrest in the region. The SCO fiasco was yet another knock to the Modi doctrine.

SAARC scenario

Diplomatic relations in the neighbourhood have taken a hard knock with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka all coming under the dominant influence of China even as India allowed it to happen. And not surprisingly, the India-dominated SAARC, which has not held a summit ever since Modi came to power in 2014, because of political tensions and terrorism concerns among member states, is now under threat of collapse.

There is news that China is reportedly planning a counter to SAARC by launching a new strategic bloc in the region, supposedly called SACA (South Asia China Alliance) to facilitate regional integration and connectivity. And as the media has reported, diplomatic sources say Beijing is actively proposing to Islamabad, Dhaka and Kathmandu. SACA is also wooing Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and its first meeting is expected to be held in August.

West and South Disturbances

Even as US president Donald Trump digs his heels in when he insists it was he who brokered a ceasefire for India and Pakistan, even as his family invests in business in Pakistan in the immediate aftermath, the European Union has been equally lukewarm and cautious, though some member countries were supportive, like France and Germany.

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