Sunday Posts

Shashi Tharoor, Author and Indian Politician, has touched a number of raw nerves when he compared Churchill and Hitler, maintaining “Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does” ( See story ) in an interview with UK-Asian, an Asian community interest website in Britain, launching his new book, Inglorious Empire   (a catchy title with a whiff of Quentin Tarantino). While this has now drawn several angry responses (for example, see this one from Zareer Masani ), there is little new here. Churchill did preside over a genocide, intentionally diverting food from India and causing a famine to punish insolent Bengalis in 1943, a forgotten affair in Britain (like all other atrocities of the empire), but subject to detailed exploration in Madhusree Mukherjee's Churchill's Secret War , and even more famously and dispassionately, in Amartya Sen's Poverty and Famine . Churchill, the arch-colonialist, had actively participated in various colonial atrocities, starting w...

Shashi Tharoor's tweets have been extremely popular, candid and humorous . But somehow the government manages to make itself embarrassed on these, and the recent statement by S M Krishna, Tharoor's boss and the Foreign Minister, that he should discuss his 'perceptions' within the 'Four Walls' of the government and not tweet is a clear reflection how uncomfortable the powers that be are. I am little surprised that we talk about the 'Four Walls' of the government. Where are those walls, really? This sounds too Kremlin- ish : That's not surprising because some of our Senior Ministers and bureaucrats cut their teeth in the old days of Indo -Soviet friendship and refuse to let go the old ways of life. The other two walls I know of - one is in China and the other was in Berlin - are not the right symbols for our government to choose. So, what is Mr. Krishna talking about? What did Mr. Tharoor say on Twitter? He said that the dilemma we have is whethe...

I am surprised to note the buzz around Shashi Tharoor's Twitter comment. Dr Tharoor said that in Vietnam, people work on Ho Chi Minh's birthday. And, also, in a reply to a direct message, said that he thinks the Indians should work on Mahatma's birthday and not take a holiday. Amazingly, this is taken as a mark of disrespect to Mahatma. I could see Dr. Tharoor having to explain to someone that he meant that he would pay his homage to Mahatma in the morning but get on with day's work thereafter. Congress Party said that the comments were purely Dr. Tharoor's and did not reflect the party's, or government's stance - the sort of spineless, boring reply you can expect from career politicians. Overall, it seems that India's political class is yet to come to terms with Twitter openness, and Dr. Tharoor is getting into trouble ever so often because he is speaking his mind. But, before we get into that, why it is so wrong to work on Mahatma's birthday...