“Foreign policy is too important to be left to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) alone,” Tharoor wisecracked during his address at the 28th annual convocation of Mangalore University here, a la Clemenceau (“War is too important to be left to the Generals”).
He noted that foreign policy debates in Parliament and the media seemed “obsessed with Pakistan or with ephemera, or worse, ephemera about Pakistan. There is little appetite for in-depth discussion about the merits of participating in the Non-Aligned Movement or the Conference of Democracies, or SAARC or the Indian Ocean Rim Conference,” he lamented.
It was a typical Tharoor day. In the morning, it was the turn of his colleague in the Union Council of Ministers, Jairam Ramesh, to be at the receiving end.
Twitter bug Tharoor tweeted before he delivered the convocation address: “About to address Mangalore University convocation. Will be wearing red silk robe. As a guest, thought it best not to disturb established tradition.”
Another of his messages read: “No harm in evolving Indian version of ceremonial garb, appropriate for our weather and dress culture. Until that happens, must stick to practice.”
Tharoor’s barb was obviously aimed at Ramesh taking off his ceremonial robe at the convocation of Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal on Thursday, while remarking: “I still have not been able to figure out after 60 years of Independence why we stick to these barbaric colonial relics.”
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