Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: Oman’s southern city of Salalah is on the agenda of Indian Member of Parliament Dr Shashi Tharoor, who hopes to visit the Dhofari capital one day.
Keen to explore its culture and experience its unique landscape, as Tharoor is from the southern Indian state of Kerala, he also has another personal reason to visit.
“I would love to know what the ancient city of Salalah is like, and that marvellous story of the Kerala king, Cheraman Perumal, who visited the city during his lifetime and planted coconut trees on the coastline, which are not native to this peninsula,” he explained.
Muscat is beautiful
“It is a pity that on all of my six or seven visits to Oman, I have only been to Muscat, the capital,” he added. “Of course, Muscat is beautiful…I love the old forts and the scene here, and it is evident that the prosperity of the capital is remarkable.
“It is a direct story of the connection between India – my part of India – and Oman, so I would love to go and see with my own eyes one day,” he said.
Tharoor was in town for an event organised by Badr Al Sama’a Hospitals to celebrate 20 years of their operations in Oman.
“This is my sixth or seventh visit to Oman in the last decade and I find it just as beautiful and sparkling as always, with the people feeling quite upbeat about the revival of the economy,” he added. “It seems as if Oman is on an upswing, and as a friend of Oman, it is always good to be here.”
Tharoor is a former United Nations Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information under erstwhile Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1 June 2002 to 9 February 2007. Tharoor then embarked on a political career, joining the Indian National Congress and contesting the seat for Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala during the 2009 Indian general elections.
He served as Minister of State for External Affairs from 28 May, 2009 to 18 April, 2010, and as Minister of State for Human Resource Development from 28 October, 2012 to 26 May 2014, both under the Manmohan Singh government. He currently serves as the chairman of the Standing Committee on Information Technology, a position to which he was appointed on 13 September, 2019, and the chairman of the All India Professionals Congress.
“I’ve seen Oman closely at work for a long time, and indeed, one of my visitors here was the former ambassador to the UN, Lyutha Al Mughairy, who in her earlier incarnation had worked with me at the United Nations Department of Public Information,” Tharoor said.
“I know that Oman has always been a voice of moderation, a voice of peace, it does not believe in fireworks, it believes in calmness, deliberation, cooperation, co-existence, and harmony,” Tharoor added.
