New Delhi: Former Union minister Manish Tewari, who travelled as part of an Operation Sindoor multi-party delegation, has downplayed the Congress party leadership’s claim that the US President forced India to “surrender” during May’s four-day military conflict with Pakistan, saying back-channel conversations during such tense events were nothing new.
In an interview to ThePrint, Tewari said the Congress leadership’s position that the Modi government bowed to the US pressure could be an outcome of the “bitterly contested” nature of the Indian politics where “nobody is prepared to give any quarter”. The Chandigarh MP travelled to Egypt, Qatar, Ethiopia and South Africa as a member of the delegation headed by NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule.
“So whenever there is a crisis, and if that crisis is between two nuclear weapon states, obviously, the rest of the world does not or cannot ignore it. So there are active conversations which take place in the back channel,” Tewari said Thursday, pointing out that under US President Donald Trump, such talks have been foregrounded.
“It has been going on since 1990 as I documented with the Robert Gates mission when Pakistan started flashing the N (nuclear) word even eight years before its nuclear test in response to some fantasized Indian buildup in the western deserts, to Operation Parakram in 2001, to the Mumbai terror outrage in 2008, to Uri to Pulwama, and to Pahalgam and its aftermath. The only difference is while earlier back channeling was a quiet process, but now you have an incumbent in the White House who believes that back channeling is front channeling,” Tewari said.
His remarks assume significance against the backdrop of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Narender Surrender’ jibes, suggesting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave in to US pressure to call off the military operation against Pakistan on 10 May. Gandhi reiterated his allegation Friday while addressing a rally in Bihar.
Tewari, who is also a lawyer, suggested that Trump’s claims that his administration played the role of a mediator was likely to be a stretch as that was a completely different format altogether. In contrast, the UN’s attempt to resolve the Kashmir dispute in 1948 at the insistence of New Delhi was an attempt at mediation, Tewari said.
“Mediation has a more structured connotation to it, but, fortunately or unfortunately these terms keep getting used alternatively. And therefore it leads to a certain sense of ambiguity. But as I was earlier pointing out that when we took the dispute to the United Nations in 1948, the Jammu and Kashmir question at that point in time in pursuance of the UN resolution, there was the UN group on India and Pakistan on Kashmir.
“There was an attempt at a structured mediation. You see, a mediation or an arbitration or an alternative dispute resolution is when two parties agree to the terms of reference of a dispute, which then they allow an arbitrator or a mediator to try and adjudicate,” said Tewari.
Asked about the Congress’s official position, Tewari said it could be the reflection of a “bitterly contested political space” where “nobody is prepared to give any quarter” to the other side.
“In fact, even when the delegation was traveling, the kind of rhetoric which was being articulated by certain sections of the NDA/BJP establishment, was also something which was completely avoidable. But that unfortunately is the nature of our politics, whether you like it or not,” said Tewari, serving his third term as a Lok Sabha MP.
However, Tewari added, there needs to be consensus on the fact that Pakistan has been a chronic sponsor of low-intensity conflict which needs to be exposed in the court of global opinion, “as against whatever may be your internal dynamics or the questions that you may have surrounding the events of 7th 8th of May, the night of 7th, 8th of May till the 10th of May.”
“I, for one, understand and appreciate that distinction, and that’s why we were completely focused on exposing Pakistan and trying to tell our interlocutors that this is not only a threat to the stability of South Asia, this is a threat to the stability of the world, given the very nature and the the chronic disposition of that state to use violence as a means of trying to achieve its senses,” he said.
Responding to a question on the Congress leadership being upset over the Centre picking leaders like him, Shashi Tharoor, Salman Khurshid for the delegations instead of the names suggested by Gandhi and party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Tewari said such things do not bother him.
“Honestly, we have been in this contested, politically acerbic, bitter space for 25 years. And there is a larger national interest, which is at play, and that larger national interest is proscribing Pakistan, which uses terror as an instrument of state policy. And to me, that was the objective. And the rest of it, for someone who has been a card-carrying member of this noise for the last two-and-a-half decades, it’s really no skin off my back,” he said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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