Wishing PM Modi, LK Advani on birthdays doesn't make me 'sanghi': Shashi Tharoor

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi's principle, Tharoor said Gandhiji taught to fight the sin and love the sinner.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday took to Twitter and said he is appalled by the vicious backlash he received for extending birthday greetings to veteran BJP leader LK Advani. The Thiruvananthapuram MP said the trolling on social media will not be able to deter him from practising what he calls civility in political discourse and he will continue wishing LK Advani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on their birthdays.

Shashi Tharoor said he will continue wishing LK Advani and PM Modi on their birthdays. 

"I am frankly appalled by the vicious backlash against my birthday greetings to LK Advaniji. Has civility disappeared entirely from our political discourse? Gandhiji taught us to respect and honour the humanity in our political opponents. It seems that now makes me a Sanghi sympathiser!" Tharoor tweeted.

"So yes, I intend to continue to wish LK Advani and Narendra Modi well on their birthdays, while opposing what they stand for politically. My 40 years of writing makes clear what I believe in. Only those who haven’t read me would call me a Sanghi. My values won’t be discarded for them," the Congress leader tweeted.

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi's principle, Tharoor said Gandhiji taught to fight the sin and love the sinner. "Ahimsa is 'a positive state of love, of doing good even to the evildoer'. While good and evil are Gandhian terms I can’t easily use (most human beings are shades of both), I deplore intolerance on either side," he wrote.

On November 8, the Congress leader wished LK Advani on his birthday and wrote, "Warm wishes for a fine human being, a gentleman in politics, a leader of wide reading and great courtesy." Social media users trolled Shashi Tharoor and asked whether he would have wished Hitler too on his birthday.