Some visible military response is unavoidable: Shashi Tharoor after Pahalgam terror attack

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said that there will be some visible military response by India against Pakistan after the horrific terror attack in Pahalgam. The senior Congress leader said to the news agency ANI that the nation is demanding it and expecting it.

While speaking to news agency ANI, Shashi Tharoor said, "This is part of a long pattern we have seen for almost a quarter of a century. People are encouraged, trained, armed, and often guided from across the border. Then Pakistan denies any responsibility. Eventually, responsibility is established and proven. It is clear that while we have a range of options, some visible military response is unavoidable. The nation is demanding it and expecting it. I am convinced there will be some response."

#WATCH | Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala | On Pahalgam terror attack, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, "This is part of a long pattern we have seen for almost a quarter of a century... People are encouraged, trained, armed, and often guided from across the border. Then Pakistan denies pic.twitter.com/4UIUpIDVks

ANI (@ANI) April 27, 2025

Shashi Tharoor further said, "Personally, I would have had no interest in Pakistan's participation in any investigation. You do not ask a murderer to investigate his own murders."

On the Union Government's decisions after the Pahalgam terror attack, he said, "The human cost of people being forced to go back is sad. Patients here will have to go back in the middle of their treatment. There are husbands and wives across the borders. There are complicated cases where the parent has the passport of one country while the child has the passport of another. I feel sorry for them. But when the government wants to send a strong signal that normal relations are no longer possible, ordinary human beings inevitably become the victims.The Indus Water Treaty is more of a symbolic gesture at this point."

Earlier, asserting that this is not the time for a domestic blame game over the Pahalgam terror attack, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said Islamist terrorists and their Pakistani handlers need to be destroyed and that "we must all support our government" in doing whatever it judges best to achieve this. He also asserted that India's commitment to Kashmiri integration and communal harmony must not be diluted.

At least 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed and several injured when terrorists opened fire at a meadow near Pahalgam town in south Kashmir's Anantnag district on Tuesday afternoon. Tharoor said the responsibility for the horrors endured this week lies more with those who planned and carried out the killings than those who failed to prevent them.

The former diplomat said Islamist terrorists and their Pakistani handlers need to be defeated and destroyed. "We must all support our government in doing whatever they judge best to do to achieve this," he said, adding that it also means not allowing any of the killers' larger objectives to be achieved. "We must continue to pursue normalcy, tourism and growth in Kashmir. India's commitment to Kashmiri integration and communal harmony must not be diluted," he said.

Tharoor called for not giving Islamist bigots in Islamabad the satisfaction of seeing India fall into their trap by behaving "as they want us to". "Let us, even as we mourn, rise above our justified anger to be the best versions of ourselves -- fair-minded, all-embracing, and determined to ensure better lives for all our people, Muslim and Hindu, Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri alike. Let us never surrender to the murderers," the Congress leader said.

*With Agency Inputs