‘Have better things to do’: Shashi Tharoor dismisses ‘zealots fulminating’ about his statements amid Congress backlash

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is leading an all-party parliamentary delegation, in the aftermath of Pakistan’s drone and missile strike on India, has dismissed his detractors. Tharoor has come under fire from his party colleagues, who have criticised him for being a “super spokesperson for BJP”. 

However, Tharoor dismissed the jibes and said: “I don’t have time for this” and “I genuinely have better things to do.”

Tharoor was in Panama, where he had arrived from Guyana, to convey India’s message of zero-tolerance for terrorism. He is scheduled to go to Colombia next. 

“After a long and successful day in Panama, I have to wind up at midnight here with departure for Bogota, Colombia in six hours, so I don’t really have time for this — but anyway,” he said, addressing the “zealots fulminating” about his “supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC in the past”. 

Tharoor said he was “clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars” and that his remarks were preceded by a reference to “several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone”. He said the previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by their “responsible respect for the LoC and the IB”. 

He said critics and trolls are welcome to destroy his views and words as they deem fit.  

The Congress MP, while speaking in Panama said,  "When, for the first time, India breached the Line of Control between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launch pad — the Uri strike in September 2016,” which has become a bone of contention for the grand old party. Congress leaders questioned Tharoor about overlooking and omitting their own history, and invoked 1965 when the Indian Army entered Pakistan and surprised them, 1971 when India divided Pakistan into two nations, and several other surgical strikes under the UPA regime when they decided to not advertise their achievements. 

Tharoor’s party colleagues Udit Raj, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh and media head Pawan Khera took umbrage at the MP’s supposed omission of the party’s history.