Tharoor's Interlocutors

Shashi Tharoor has tweeted himself into trouble for the umpteenth time. This time over the role visualized for the Saudis in sorting out Indo-Pak problems. When there was a hue and cry over involving them in what India has always maintained to be bilateral disputes, the Minister of State took shelter in semantics. He has been misunderstood, he claimed, since what he had in mind for the Saudis was the role of an ‘interlocutor’ and not a ‘mediator’. Oxford’s Advanced Learners’ Dictionary defines an interlocutor as ‘one who takes part in a discussion or a dialogue’. One wonders how the Saudis would do that without getting involved in the dispute. If the intent was to use Saudis’ leverage with Pakistanis (remember how they bailed out beleaguered Pakistani leaders like Nawaz Sharif, Zardari & Musharraf !) to put a stop to terror strikes from across the border, our delegation failed to visualize that the Saudis can do likewise in raking up Kashmir problem at Pakistan’s instance. Tweeting apart, it is time for our government to understand that we have to fight our own battles and secondly, prudence is better than valour