Deconstructing Tharoor's Persona

by

James Joseph

I am reminded of the old maxim that one man's meat is another man's poison and people taking umbrage about Shashi Tharoor's CRASSLY INANE remarks about travelling cattle class in solidarity with our holy cows even as millions of Indians are forced to commute do so not out of an alleged ignorance of the niceties of the English language but out of a sense of hurt by this Johnny come lately on India's political landscape. A minister ought to know the contours of law when he speaks in the parliament. Defending his inamorato in Lok Sabha the honorable minister, ironically a learned doctor of laws, displayed a colossal ignorance of law --- I am referring to Section 79 of The Companies Act 1956. Again, please recollect the gaffe about the shameful appeal to the Saudis to step in as interlocutors in the Kashmir dispute and the minister trying to distort the meaning of the term interlocutor! All these snafus betray a sense of lack of seriousness and casual facetious behaviour which render him unfit to adorn a ministerial berth. Public men, Dr. Shashi Tharoor should have known, have a lesser right to private life, especially so in India. The traditions of maryada which forced Sri Ram to cast away Sita, the earlier agni pariksha notwithstanding, all because of a whispering campaign by a mere dhobhi has to be accepted by Shashi Tharoor too. Shashi Tharoor had cast away Tilottama ( of mixed Kashmir- Bengali pedigree) and 'persuaded' Christa Giles to dissolve this second marriage because he wanted to shack up with Sunanda Pushkar. And, with whom he was seen brazenly partying in New Delhi arm in arm even before the divorce came through. Surely a conduct unbecoming for a public man! And if this is the so-called fresh whiff that he has allegedly brought into India's public life then I must say it is malodorous. Again Shashi Tharoor showed gross insensitivity when he sought to stay for a month or so at the Taj a five (or is it seven?) star hotel until he was forced to quit by the Congress High Command. His reason that he chose not to stay in Kerala House in New Delhi owing to inadequate facilities for calisthenics insulted even the intelligence of a mere moron. Who paid the bills for the month long stay at the Taj? The answer is still shrouded in mystery. .Shashi's reputed attempts to import videshi ways to sing the national anthem at the Federal Bank conclave, tantamounted to insulting the national anthem. If these are the insights that the Doctor is expected to infuse into our public life, pray God. What takes the cake is that Shashi Tharoor is notably deficient in intellectual integrity (if not also moral and financial variants of integrity over which there are question marks). After having heaped scorn and jeered the pretensions of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty right from Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her two sons to Sonia Gandhi and Sonia's kids in his book, published in 1997 titled India : From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, he had no compunctions in joining the Congess Party, which despite the INC acronym remains Indira Congress in essence. Would it be too much to speculate that he must have cut a deal with the Congess as the latter is not particularly known for its magnanimity towards blasphemers vis-à-vis the Nehru-Gandhi pantheon. (Refer article by Ms Vidya Subramaniam in The Hindu of 22 August 2009). As for the unsound allegation that a well heeled Tharoor has excited the envy of the mundane all I have to say is that far more well educated intellectuals of the stature of John Mathai, CD Deshmukh, Ravindra Varma , H M Patel and Sachindra Chaudhuri behaved with the dignity that their offices demanded and never got enmeshed in such controversies. We, in India, suffer from a debility of deifying people with warts et al. And the views expressed by Shri K T Rajagopalan are a sad reflection of this national weakness..

1

 I called him an immoralist , and in India his vocabulary look suspect . The only problem for congressmen is that in just one deal 70 crores for a hairdresser , without one rupee to the godmother

menon.jairamc | April 29, 2010