From New Delhi to Berlin — Congress MP Dr. Shashi Tharoor arrived in the German capital on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, to participate in the prestigious Richard von Weizsäcker Forum 2026, engaging with one of Europe's foremost foundations on the sharpest questions reshaping the international order.

Tharoor held a conversation with Dr. Bernhard Straub, Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, covering ground that stretched from the bilateral relationship between India and Germany to the broader, unsettling question of how nations navigate a world where, as Tharoor put it, 'the old certainties no longer hold.'

Why the Richard von Weizsäcker Forum matters

The Richard von Weizsäcker Forum — named after the former German Federal President widely admired for his moral clarity in post-war European politics — is convened by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, a major German philanthropic powerhouse with a long record of fostering transatlantic and Euro-Asian dialogue. The forum brings together policymakers, intellectuals, and civil-society voices to grapple with precisely the kind of structural disruptions in global governance that Tharoor flagged: the erosion of rules-based norms, the fracturing of alliances, and the search for what diplomats increasingly call 'strategic autonomy.'

For an Indian voice to feature prominently at such a forum is itself a signal. India and Germany have in recent years deepened their partnership across defence technology, green hydrogen, critical minerals, and digital infrastructure — a relationship that has gained new urgency as both countries recalibrate their supply chains and strategic alignments.

The 'room for manoeuvre' question

The phrase Tharoor chose — 'room for manoeuvre' — carries considerable diplomatic freight. It is the language of middle powers and non-aligned traditions asserting the right not to be conscripted into binary geopolitical camps. For India, a founding voice of the Non-Aligned Movement and now the world's most populous democracy balancing relationships with Washington, Moscow, and Brussels simultaneously, this question is anything but academic.

Tharoor's presence in Berlin, engaging a German audience on exactly this theme, underscores the growing demand in European capitals for an Indian perspective on multipolarity — and the extent to which New Delhi's foreign-policy posture is being watched, and courted, by partners who once took the Western-led order for granted.

A veteran of multilateral diplomacy who served as UN Under-Secretary-General before entering Indian parliamentary politics, Tharoor brings rare institutional memory to these conversations — the kind of longitudinal view that traces how far the international system has drifted from the post-Cold War consensus of the 1990s.

The forum continues in Berlin. The conversations it sparks may travel much further.