— N R Mohanty —
Is Shashi Tharoor using terror as a figleaf to switch loyalty to PM Modi whom he called crass, communal and bigoted not long ago?
Shashi Tharoor team has completed its trip to the USA and proceeded to Guyana yesterday. What was the team’s brief? This team was supposed to meet the decision-makers and the opinion-makers in the most powerful country of the world, influence their thinking and win them over to the Indian cause, a task which the Indian embassy in the country had failed to achieve, due to sheer incompetence.
Who all did the Shashi Tharoor team end up meeting in the USA? Most influential decision-makers of the country, such as top Trump government officials and law makers — be it Democrats or Republicans — chose to give the team a miss. So did the big media, the think tanks, the public intellectuals. Shashi Tharoor team’s crowning glory was addressing a press conference in the Indian embassy premises which the usual suspects attached to the embassy attended. That’s how the very first leg of Shashi Tharoor team’s Sarkari vacation came to an end.
What does it show? That India has become a pariah state in the big world capitals. Every country wants to do business with India, but they don’t want to swallow the Indian sob story. That they can’t digest PM Modi’s grotesque show of belligerence day after day; they can’t tolerate foreign minister Jaishankar’s confrontational wolf warrior diplomacy week after week. They believe that Modi’s India has aced doublespeak; what it says must be taken with a spoonful of salt. Not surprising that India’s voice finds no resonance anywhere.
What a coincidence that the same Shashi Tharoor, who has of late turned a Modi cheerleader, had himself lambasted the Modi government for turning India into a pariah state!
In a biting piece titled Pariah India, he had said: ‘For three decades, India’s self-branding as the world’s fastest-growing free-market democracy worked, with world leaders queuing up to visit New Delhi. But with Modi government in office, it all began to fall apart.”
Tharoor then went on to add: “The reason is not hard to find. India’s domestic political environment has turned toxic under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, owing to a train of divisive, socially discriminatory policies, accompanied by incendiary political rhetoric bordering on Islamophobia.”
Tharoor had doubled down on a communal Modi government that has turned India into a pariah state: “The Rising India narrative rested on India’s success at managing its internal differences democratically and peacefully. But thanks to BJP’s divisive sectarianism, driven by narrow party-political goals, India’s stature in the world has never been lower.”
Then read Shashi Tharoor’s sharp conclusion: “The Indian government shows little signs of waking up to the consequences of its domestic policies. It consoles itself that its actions still garner popular support in India. But an India that is perceived as bigoted, with a government that, intoxicated by intolerant majoritarianism, is wilfully driving sectarian wedges between its people, can forget about the global embrace on which its future depends”.
The same Shashi Tharoor who wrote this devastating obituary of India’s place in the comity of nations is travelling to foreign capitals as Modi government’s envoy! Can he weave a magic wand to resurrect India’s image in a couple of weeks? Will he be able to tell the world that since he wrote that demonising piece, Modi government has become more inclusive?
Or, is it that Shashi Tharoor using terror is a figleaf? Has he turned a loyalist and joined a bunch of self-servers to swear by a ‘bigoted’ Modi?
