Tharoor addresses terrorism, identity

His was nearly a household name. Shashi Tharoor almost became the United Nations' newest secretary-general after a long diplomatic career that included refugee and peacekeeping work and ultimately led him to the high-level post of undersecretary-general for communications and public information.

He lost his bid to become the eighth secretary-general to Ban Ki-moon of South Korea late last year in a close contest.

On Wednesday evening, Tharoor was in Charleston, the featured guest at "The Roundtable," a semi-annual event initiated in 1989 by John Winthrop and hosted by the College of Charleston's Friends of Addlestone Library.

For a while, the U.N. was in a very tight spot, Tharoor said in an interview before his talk. Shortly after the beginning of the war in Iraq, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey revealing that many Americans were critical of the international institution because of its refusal to endorse the war, while many observers in the rest of the world were critical of the U.N. for failing to prevent the war.

A no-win situation then, he said. But today, it's a little different.

"More and more people are beginning to realize that the U.N. did the right thing," he said.

For his Roundtable speech, Tharoor, a prolific author and businessman, planned to discuss terrorism, globalization and identity.

A new era of enmity and retrenchment was initiated by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he said. On one hand, the world has become "an homogenous theme park" where most people drive similar cars, use the same computer software and increasingly assimilate into a single, globalized community. On the other hand we see among fundamentalists a fanatical obsession to be part of a defined group, "a passion for pure belonging" based on religious doctrine, he said.

Maybe fundamentalism is a reaction to cultural dissolution. Maybe not. In any case, the two phenomena are happening simultaneously, Tharoor said, and the citizens of the world are increasingly challenged to navigate between these extremes.

How to do it? Value individuals and the array of qualities and characteristics, tastes and tendencies, that make them unique, he said. Celebrate diversity.

"There's nothing wrong with religion," Tharoor said, "but there's more to people than just that."

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.