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‘Why are you in Congress, hypocrite’: Shashi Tharoor's praise for Modi sets off firestorm
Tharoor's praise for PM Modi's speech about India's progress drew criticism from Congress colleagues, who have questioned his alignment with the party.
Shashi Tharoor seems to have ruffled Congress's feathers again with his recent remarks - not aligning with his party - praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a lecture he said he was glad to have attended despite battling cold and cough.
Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday, in a post on X, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ramnath Goenka Lecture served as both an economic outlook and a cultural call to action, urging the nation to be restless for progress.
The remarks by Shashi Tharoor, who has often ‘spoken for himself’ and not the Congress - sparked reaction from his party, which called wondered how he found PM's worth appreciation and also why is he not in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) already.
‘Hypocrite’
Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said on Wednesday Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor's problem is that he probably “does not know a lot about the country”, asking why is he in Congress if he feels BJP and PM Modi's strategies are better.
“I don't think he knows a lot about the country... If, according to you, someone is doing good for the country by going against the Congress's policies, then you should follow those policies... Why are you in Congress? Is it only because you are an MP?... If you really feel that the BJP or PM Modi's strategies are working better than the party you are in, then you should give an explanation,” Dikshit said, speaking to ANI news agency.
If you are not giving one, you are a hypocrite, he added.
Another Congress leader, Supriya Shrinate, said on Wednesday that she did not find anything “praiseworthy” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address at the recent event, unlike Shashi Tharoor, who said that he was “glad” to be a part of the audience at the event despite having a “bad cold and cough”.
What did Shashi Tharoor say about PM's lecture
Shashi Tharoor had said in his X post that PM Modi, in his lecture, emphasized that India is no longer just an 'emerging market' but an 'emerging model' for the world, noting its economic resilience.
“PM Modi said he’d been accused of being in “election mode” all the time, but he was really in “emotional mode” to redress the problems of the people,” Tharoor said in the post where he added he was “glad to have been in the audience despite battling a bad cold and cough”.
"A significant part of the speech was dedicated to overturning Macaulay's 200-year legacy of "slave mentality." PM Modi appealed for a 10-year national mission to restore pride in India’s heritage, languages, and knowledge systems. I wish he had also acknowledged how Ramnath Goenka had used English to raise a voice for Indian nationalism!" Tharoor said.
“On the whole, the PM’s address served as both an economic outlook and a cultural call to action, urging the nation to be restless for progress. Glad to have been in the audience despite battling a bad cold and cough!” he added.
Tharoor's X remarks came close on the heels of another post - on LK Advani - that had irked the Congress and prompted it to distance itself from the same.
Shashi Tharoor, replying to a someone on X, had defended BJP veteran LK Advani over the criticism on Rath Yatra of the 1990s, which had triggered the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
