No one sitting in Pakistan will be allowed to believe they can just kill Indian citizens with impunity: Tharoor

New York: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that post-Pahalgam attacks, there is now going to be a new norm that no one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill Indian citizens with impunity, as he asserted that there will be a “price to pay.”

Tharoor is leading a delegation of Indian parliamentarians to Guyana, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and the US, conveying India's resolve against terrorism and emphasising Pakistan's links to terrorism.

The multi-party delegations to different countries will underline that the recent conflict with Pakistan was triggered by the Pahalgam terror attack and not Operation Sindoor, as alleged by Islamabad.

The retaliatory Operation Sindoor launched by India targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

In an interaction hosted by the Consulate General of India in New York with a select group of prominent members of the Indian-American community and individuals from leading media and think tanks on Saturday, Tharoor said that India’s message to Pakistan has been clear: “We didn't want to start anything".

"We were just sending a message to terrorists. You started, we replied. If you stop, we stop. And they stopped. There was an 88-hour war. We look back on that with a great deal of frustration because it needn’t have happened at all. Lives have been lost. But at the same time, we look back on this experience with a steely and renewed sense of determination.

“There is now got to be a new norm. No one sitting in Pakistan is going to be allowed to believe that they can just walk across the border and kill our citizens with impunity. There will be a price to pay and that price has been going up systematically,” Tharoor said.

He said that India has focused on a very different narrative from some of its neighbours.

“Our focus for some years now has been on being the world's fastest growing free markets democracy, attempting to focus on the development of our economy, our high emphasis on technology and technological growth and pulling large numbers of people from below the poverty line” not just into the 21st Century, but into the world and the opportunities the 21st-century offers.

Tharoor spoke in detail about the horrific April 22 Pahalgam attack in Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed, including one Nepalese citizen, for which The Resistance Front took responsibility and then retracted.

He highlighted the dastardly manner in which the tourists were singled out and targeted based on their religion, and the retaliatory measures taken by India through Operation Sindoor, which targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through precision strikes. He also listed the various terror attacks - from the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks to attacks in Uri and Pulwama - carried out in India by Pakistani terror outfits.

The delegation led by Tharoor includes Sarfaraz Ahmad (JMM), Ganti Harish Madhur Balayogi (TDP), Shashank Mani Tripathi (BJP), Bhubaneswar Kalita (BJP), Milind Deora (Shiv Sena), Tejasvi Surya (BJP), and India’s former Ambassador to the US Taranjit Sandhu.

The delegation reached New York on Saturday and will travel to Guyana from here. It will return to the US on June 3.

Tharoor underscored that India is “not interested, and we still remain absolutely clear, we are not interested in warfare with Pakistan.

“We would much rather be left alone to grow our economy and put our people into the world” of the 21st century, he said.

“We have no desire to have anything that the Pakistanis have. Sadly, we may be a status quo power. They are not. They are a revisionist power. They covet territory that India controls, and they want to have it at any price.

"And if they can't get it through conventional means, they're willing to get it through terrorism. That is not acceptable to us, and that's really the message that we are here to give all of you in this country and elsewhere," he said.

Tharoor added that India is “determined now that there's got to be a new bottom line to this.” He said over the years, India has tried everything from giving international dossiers, complaints to the sanctions committee, diplomacy.

“Everything has been tried. Pakistan has remained in denial. There has been absolutely no conviction, no prosecution of terrorists, no attempt to dismantle the terror infrastructure in that country and the continued presence of safe havens.

“So from our point of view, this is it. You do this, you're going to get this back. And we have demonstrated with this operation that we can do it with a degree of precision and with a degree of restraint that the world, we hope, will understand.

“We have a right to self-defence. We've exercised that right. We have not done so irresponsibly…That's really the message I wanted to give you all today.” “I don't work for the government, as you know, I work for an opposition party,” Tharoor said, adding that he had authored an op-ed within a couple of days of the Pahalgam attack, saying “the time had come to hit hard, hit smart".

“And I'm pleased to say that's exactly what India did.” He added that “India sent a clear message” that it was not going to take terror lying down and it would answer.

“But equally, that by delivering very precisely calculated, calibrated strikes on very specific targets, it was also sending a message that this was not meant to be the opening salvo in a protracted war, but just an act of retribution, that we were prepared to stop with that act.”