Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has triggered a fresh controversy while the promotional event of his new book ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and his India’ in Bengaluru on Sunday, 28 October.
Tharoor used a metaphor to explain PM Modi’s ‘personality cult’ which does not go well with many in the RSS. He recalled a 2012 article from the Caravan titled ‘The Emperor Uncrowned’ which quotes an ”unnamed RSS source” comparing PM Modi with a scorpion sitting on a Shivling.
“There’s an extraordinarily striking metaphor” with which an RSS member expresses the organisation’s frustration with its “inability to curb Modi”, Tharoor said. He then stated an RSS functionary as saying: “Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shivling, you cannot remove him with your hand and you cannot hit it with a chappal either”.
In the 2012 article written by Journalist Vinod Jose, he writes, “Shortly before I left Gujarat, one RSS leader described his own feelings in a bitter sigh: ‘Shivling mein bichhu baitha hai. Na usko haath se utaar sakte ho, na usko joota maar sakte ho.”
The Congress MP from Kerala further added, “If you think about it, it is a very profound understanding of the relationship (between RSS and Modi), If you remove a scorpion with your hand, you will get stung very badly. But if you hit a Shivling with a slipper, you undermine all the sacred tenets of the faith you all know that the scorpion is sitting on. So, ultimately, you live with it, with seething frustration. That may well be a very interesting clue to the complex dynamics that exists between the Hindutva movement and the Moditva expression of it.”
Tharoor criticising PM Modi told the PTI that Modi is a man of great eloquence who is silent when Dalits are flogged, Muslims are killed, cow lynchings happen. He added that if Modi had genuinely concentrated on transforming the lives of Indians, and on ‘sabka saath sabka vikas’, he could have been a success because his diagnosis was very often right.
BJP demands apology :
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad demanded an apology from Congress President Rahul Gandhi. He said, “Rahul Gandhi, you claim yourself be to a Shiv Bhakt, please reply to this very horrific denunciation of Lord Mahadev by giving apology to what Tharoor has done.”
BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain told News18, “He (Tharoor) has crossed all the levels, his comments are unacceptable, what kind of a language he is using. Another Congress MLA says he (Modi) is a mosquito. Congress leaders are using foul language against the prime minister”
Union Minister Gajraj Singh said, “Tharoor has not insulted the prime minister, he has insulted crores of Hindus and Shiv devotees, I will only say this: Congress is now crossing a line.”