 "Kshitij Tyagi has gone viral for his fiery speeches at the UN. ANI")
Indian diplomat Kshitij Tyagi is again making headlines. This time, his response to Pakistan at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Tuesday (September 23) has brought him to the spotlight.
Lashing out at Islamabad, he accused it of “bombing their own people” and abusing the “forum with baseless and provocative statements against India”. Tyagi grabbed eyeballs earlier this month when he gave a sharp response to Switzerland, telling the European country to focus on the challenges it faces domestically from racism and xenophobia.
As the Indian diplomat makes waves at the UNHRC again, we take a look at who he is.
Who is Kshitij Tyagi?
Kshitij Tyagi, a 2012-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
He later pursued an MTech in Thermal Energy and Environmental Engineering from the same institute.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked at Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate company, as a business analyst for nearly three years, from 2007 to 2010.
He joined the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy as a scientist in 2010, a role he held for a little over two years.
Tyagi reportedly cleared the highly competitive Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination in 2012, ranking 148th nationally.
He plunged into diplomacy two years later, when he served as the Third Secretary at the Indian Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal.
“I wanted to touch lives, to matter beyond corporate metrics,” Tyagi said in an interview in 2014, as per Mint.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsTyagi was appointed as Second Secretary in Brasília in 2015 and promoted to First Secretary in Cairo, Egypt, in 2018.
In January 2024, Tyagi joined the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations as First Secretary. He became a Counsellor at the mission in January this year.
Tyagi hits out at Pakistan
Indian diplomat Kshitij Tyagi castigated Pakistan at the 60th session of the UNHRC on Tuesday.
Speaking during Agenda Item 4 of the UNHRC session, he called Islamabad’s interventions “baseless and provocative statements against India.”
“A delegation that epitomises the antithesis of this approach continues to abuse this forum with baseless and provocative statements against India,” Tyagi said.
“Instead of coveting our territory, they would do well to vacate the Indian territory under their illegal occupation and focus on rescuing an economy on life support, a polity muzzled by military dominance, and a human rights record stained by persecution — perhaps once they find time away from exporting terrorism, harbouring UN-proscribed terrorists, and bombing their own people.”
Tyagi’s scathing response came a day after dozens of people, including civilians, were killed in an explosion at a compound of the Pakistani Taliban in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province .
The Indian diplomat also reiterated India’s stand that the UNHRC must “remain universal, objective, and non-selective in its approach” and that its work should be “channelised into forging consensus through a non-politicised and forward-looking approach”.
“Our collective efforts should foster unity and constructive engagement, not division,” he said."
We are concerned by the continued proliferation of country-specific mandates. Far from advancing the Council’s core mandate, they reinforce perceptions of bias and selectivity. Focusing narrowly on the human rights situation in a few countries distracts us from the urgent and shared challenges the world faces. We firmly believe that lasting progress can only be achieved through dialogue, cooperation, and capacity-building- always with the consent of the State concerned," Tyagi said.
Other notable remarks
Earlier this month, a video of Tyagi at the UNHRC went viral. He was seen slamming Pakistan, saying India does not need lessons from a “terror sponsor” that continues to finance and shelter the networks threatening global security.
“We are compelled, once again, to address provocations from a country whose own leadership recently likened it to a “dump truck”, perhaps an inadvertently apt metaphor for a state that continues to deposit recycled falsehoods and stale propaganda before this distinguished Council,” Tyagi said.
He made the remarks while delivering India’s Right of Reply at the General Debate on the oral update by the High Commissioner at the 60th Session of the Human Rights Council after Pakistan’s comments on India.
“We need no lessons from a terror sponsor; no sermons from a persecutor of minorities; no advice from a state that has squandered its own credibility,” he said.
Tyagi also hit out at Switzerland at the 5th Meeting of the 60th Session of UNHRC, describing its remarks on India as “surprising, shallow and ill-informed”.
He said, “As it holds the UNHRC presidency, it is all the more important for Switzerland to avoid wasting the council’s time with narratives that are blatantly false and do not do justice to the reality of India.”
Tyagi advised Switzerland to focus on addressing its own challenges, such as “racism, systematic discrimination and xenophobia.”
Underlining India’s diversity and democratic ideals, Tyagi said, “As the world’s largest, most diverse and vibrant democracy, with a civilizational embrace of pluralism, India remains ready to help Switzerland address these concerns.”
Tyagi’s sharp retort came after Switzerland had said at the UN, “In India, we call on the Government to take effective measures to protect the minorities and uphold the rights to the freedom of expression and the freedom of the media.”
In February, Tyagi tore into Pakistan, describing it as a “failed state” that survives on “international handouts".
Addressing the 58th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Tyagi rebuked Pakistan after it raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) at the multilateral global forum.
Criticising Pakistan’s leaders and delegates, Tyagi said it was “regrettable" to see how they continue to “dutifully spread falsehoods handed down by its military terrorist complex."
He further accused Pakistan of “making a mockery" of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) by using it as a “mouthpiece", saying that it was “fooling nobody." He continued, “We do not wish to dignify such propaganda, but are constrained to make a few simple points for the record."
Tyagi reaffirmed that J&K and Ladakh are, and will always remain, an integral and inalienable part of India. “The unprecedented political, social and economic progress in J&K in the past few years speaks for itself. These successes are a testament to the people’s trust in the government’s commitment to bring normalcy to a region scarred by decades of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism," he said.
With inputs from agencies