'Agree with Shashi Tharoor': Pawan Khera quotes Congress MP's own book to counter 'first surgical strikes' remark

Shashi Tharoor has led an Indian delegation to the US and four other countries as part of the Centre's global outreach in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor

After Shashi Tharoor on Thursday hit back at criticism from within Congress, his party colleague Pawan Khera posted a passage from the Thiruvananthapuram MP’s book “The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India”.

In a post on X, Khera posted a photograph of a highlighted passage where Tharoor has accused the Modi regime of "repeatedly using the army in its political propaganda".

I agree with that Dr @ShashiTharoor who wrote about surgical strikes in his book in 2018 - The Paradoxical Prime Minister. #ReadingNowpic.twitter.com/hAhsfwH0JT

Pawan Khera (@Pawankhera) May 29, 2025

"The shameless exploitation of the 2016 surgical strikes' along the Line of Control with Pakistan, and of a military raid in hot pursuit of rebels in Myanmar, as party election tool-something the Congress had never done despite having authorized several such strikes earlier-marked particularly disgraceful dilution of the principle that national Security issues require both discretion and non-partisanship," Tharoor wrote in his book.

The Congress had earlier slammed Tharoor over his reported statement in Panama that India breached the Line of Control (LoC) for the first time during the 2016 surgical strike on a terror base. In response, Tharoor said on X, “Critics are welcome to distort my words, but I genuinely have better things to do.”

Tharoor is leading a multi-party delegation to convey India's zero-tolerance policy towards cross-border terrorism.

“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: For those zealots fulminating about my supposed ignorance of Indian valour across the LoC: in the past: 1. I was clearly and explicitly speaking only about reprisals for terrorist attacks and not about previous wars; & 2. My remarks were preceded by a reference to the several attacks that have taken place in recent years alone, during which previous Indian responses were both restrained and constrained by our responsible respect for the LoC and the IB,” Tharoor wrote on X.