SME Times News Bureau | 29 Jan, 2018
Known for his vibrant diction in English, Congress MP and writer
Shashi Tharoor has often sent twitteratis looking for dictionaries
but the writer of the just-released "Why I Am A Hindu,"
reinforced his sustained attack on the Hindutva ideology by making a
direct attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and maintained that
"this is going to be the last Budget" of the Modi
government - all of this, bilingually, in Hindi and English.
Tharoor
has often been criticised as an "English-speaking elite"
and therefore his emphasis on Hindi, the language spoken or
understood by a majority in the northern part of India, bears immense
political relevance.
A regular at the Jaipur Literature
Festival, he addressed a session on his last book "An Era of
Darkness," which has, incidentally, also been translated into
Hindi and therefore engaged with the audience here in the language.
Later, he addressed a press conference and took questions from the
visiting media.
Speaking mostly in Hindi, with brief
corrections in English where required, the Congress MP who represents
Thiruvananthapuram in Parliament said that "this is going to be
the last Budget of his (Modi) government," and some desperate
measures like creation of jobs may be anticipated from the
Budget.
"They must live up to the promises that they
had made. So, they may do something on employment to catch
attention," he said.
Tharoor made a direct attack on
Modi by saying: "Jisne kaha ki na khaunga aur na khane dunga,
who aaj pakode ki baat karne lage hain. Woh nahi samajhte ki log chai
aur pakode isliye bech rahe hain kyonki jobs nahi hai (The one who
said he will neither be corrupt nor tolerate corruption is today
talking about pakodas. He does not understand that people are selling
tea and pakodas only because there are no jobs)."
Notably,
in a recent interview to a television channel, Modi had answered
criticism over not creating enough jobs by saying a pakoda seller
earning Rs 200 a day should also be considered employed.
Responding
to a question on Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Tharoor said that
"we must give him time to review" the measure of his
party.
"Rahul Gandhi is not a reluctant politician.
We saw him in Gujarat -- he was travelling all the time and has shown
his work," he said in response to a question that had billed
Rahul as a "reluctant politician".
Meanwhile,
his sustained attack on the ideology of Hindutva continued on the
second-last day of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
He
reiterated that there is a need "to take back Hinduism"
from the practitioners of Hindutva, while also highlighting that
Hindutva and Hinduism are totally different. "Hinduism does not
teach violence and people who attack and lynch others cannot be
Hindus, they are anti-Hindus," he said.
The fulcrum
of Tharoor's latest book rests on an argument which seeks to
establish a narrative that an average Indian's belief in Hinduism is
not in sync with that of Hindutva.
He ends his book by
arguing that there is a need to "take back Hinduism," and
has propelled a relentless critique of the ideology in almost each of
his recent public appearances.