India Hit Pakistan ‘Hard and Smart’: Shashi Tharoor

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Tharoor Leads All-Party Delegation in Washington, Highlights India’s Resilience and Global Engagement Post-Kashmir Attack

By TRH News Desk

NEW DELHI, June 5, 2025 —Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, leading an all-party parliamentary delegation, strongly emphasized India’s dual focus on economic growth and counterterrorism during a press briefing at the National Press Club in Washington DC. He asserted that India “hit Pakistan hard and smart”. Tharoor also said that terrorist attack in Pahalgam was a distraction amid a booming tourism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing the media, Tharoor underscored India’s commitment to development, technology, and pharmaceuticals, calling the recent terrorist attack in Kashmir a “frustrating distraction” from the nation’s trajectory of progress.

“In fact, for us, this terrorist episode was a distraction,” he said. “It was a most unfortunate and frustrating experience to have this inflicted upon us at a time when we were focusing on growth,” added Tharoor.

Tharoor spoke of Kashmir’s recent tourism boom as an indicator of stability, pointing out that the previous summer had seen more visitors than Aspen, Colorado. “Kashmir was booming… ordinary Kashmiris were benefiting from vast numbers of tourists coming in,” he noted, describing the attack on tourists in Kashmir as a “sickening outrage” that united the country in grief and resolve.

He praised the Indian government’s military response to the attack, characterizing it as “hit hard, hit smart.” Tharoor explained that the retaliatory strikes targeted only the infrastructure of terrorist organizations listed on US and United Nations sanction lists.

“We have not hit any Pakistan government sites. We haven’t hit any Pakistan civilian sites. We haven’t hit any military sites either. We’ve just hit terrorist infrastructure,” he said, reinforcing India’s stated intention to avoid escalation while asserting its right to self-defence.

Tharoor detailed the delegation’s engagements with US lawmakers, including meetings with the India Caucus, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to Tharoor, the conversations were uniformly supportive.

“We didn’t have a single skeptical or negative voice,” he said. “Total support and solidarity for India and its fight against terrorism and complete understanding of India’s right to defend itself,” added the Congress MP.

Tharoor also highlighted a broader diplomatic takeaway: “Though everyone knows we are there for a particular mission, there is tremendous interest in strengthening relations with India across the board.”

He concluded by noting that the delegation left Capitol Hill “very pleased” with the level of engagement and the strong bipartisan support for deeper US-India ties in security, trade, and economic cooperation.

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