Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who is in the United States leading an all-party delegation to put forth India’s stance against state-sponsored terrorism by Pakistan, said on Saturday that New Delhi is not interested in warfare, but Islamabad resorts to terrorism to try and achieve its strategic goals.
Shashi Tharoor-led all-party delegation includes JMM MP Sarfaraz Ahmad, BJP MPs Tejasvi Surya and Bhubaneswar Kalita, and TDP MP Ganti Harish Madhur. (File/X/Randhir Jaiswal)
Addressing the media at the Indian Consulate in New York, Tharoor said, “We are not interested in warfare with Pakistan. We would much rather be left alone to grow our economy and pull our people into the world they are getting ready for in the 21st century. But, the Pakistanis, sadly, we might be a status quo power, but they are not…they covet the territory India controls, and they want to have it at any price. If they can’t get it through conventional means, they are willing to get it through terrorism, and that is not acceptable to us”
‘Terrorism is a global problem’
Upon landing in the US, the all-party delegation led by Tharoor visited the 9/11 Memorial site and expressed solidarity with the victims of the terror attack. He said that the delegation’s visit is a reminder that terrorism is a shared problem for both India and the US.
“It was obviously a very moving moment for us, but it was also meant to send a very strong message that we are here in a city which is still bearing the scars of that savage terrorist attack in the wake of yet another terrorist attack in our own country,” Tharoor said.
“We came both as a reminder that this is a shared problem, but also out of a spirit of solidarity with the victims… It’s a global problem, it’s a scourge and we must all fight it unitedly,” he added.
Shashi Tharoor on Pahalgam attack
Talking about the April 22 terror attack in Kashmir’s Pahalgam which killed 26 people, most of whom were tourists, Tharoor said, “It was a bunch of people going around identifying the religions of the people before them and killing them on that basis, which was intended to provoke a backlash in the rest of India, since the victims were overwhelmingly Hindu.”
“Within one hour of the atrocity, a group called the Resistance Front had claimed credit. The Resistance Front was known for some years to be a frontal organisation of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is on the US-designated terror list as well as UN sanctions committees. And India had gone to the UN sanctions committee with information about the Resistance Front in 2023 and 2024, and now, sadly, it had acted in 2025, they repeated their claim the next day,” he added.
Tharoor said that, unfortunately, Pakistan chose to follow its usual path of denial and succeeded in removing the reference to TRF from the press statement drafted in the Security Council of the UN two days later with China’s help.
Shashi Tharoor-led all-party delegation includes JMM MP Sarfaraz Ahmad, BJP MPs Tejasvi Surya and Bhubaneswar Kalita, and TDP MP Ganti Harish Madhur. After the US, they are set to visit Panama, Guyana, Brazil and Colombia.
With ANI inputs