New Delhi, July 2 -- High-profile Indian Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat, is in a weird political twilight zone where his own Congress Party may not fully reject him and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not fully accept him. The result is he is caught between two stools, neither of which seems particularly stable for him.

It is a sort of a classic avoidance-avoidance conflict as he grapples with the direction of his political future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be indulging him with the attention of a teasing suitor not ready to commit while Congress Party grandee Rahul Gandhi is treating him with apathy not quite ready to break up. In many ways, for Tharoor this is a good dilemma to be in...