Shashi Tharoor Shoots From the Hip, Again!

NEW DELHI: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor continued his run in with the BJP in the Lok Sabha today with a statement during zero hour wherein he urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his silence and take action “against his own partymen and the anti-Indian elements” within.

Speaking of the attack on his constituency office in Kerala and the death threats he has received, Tharoor said that this was clearly retaliation because of his criticism of right wing extremism. He said the attack, however, was part of a larger attempt to destroy the idea of India. And that “their victims in recent months have constituted intellectuals, minorities, various citizens with yesterday even Swami Agnivesh”. He said that all those opposed to rising intolerance have been attacked physically.

He said that in doing so they have forgotten Indian democracy’s “historic consensus” that one does not have to agree all the time so long as you agree on the ground rules. And these ground rules, Tharoor added, are being broken at grave risk to Indian democracy by communalism, mob lynching and hooliganism.

The MP had come into controversy a week ago while addressing a meeting in Thiruvananthapuram where he had said, “"If they (BJP) win a repeat in the Lok Sabha our democratic constitution as we understand it will not survive as they as they will have all the elements they need to tear apart the constitution of India and write a new one, That new one will be the one which will enshrine principles of Hindu Rashtra, that will remove equality for minorities that will create a Hindu Pakistan.”

This sparked a major controversy with reports suggesting that the Congress had distanced itself from the “Hindu Pakistan” term. However, that it was not really so was signalled by Tharoor just a day ago when in his home constituency he again stated, “they are asking me to go to Pakistan. Who has given them the right to decide that I am not a Hindu like them and I don’t have the right to stay in the country? Have they started a Taliban in Hinduism?” He was addressing a public meeting.

And today he followed it further in the Lok Sabha with a statement that clearly had the backing of the party. Tharoor hit out at the BJP directly of destroying the historic democratic consensus of India, and indulging in rank communalism, mob lynchings and hooliganism. He brought in Prime Minister Narendra Modi into the scope of his remarks asking him to break his silence and act his “own partymen.”