Shashi Tharoor’s recent remarks praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi have stirred friction inside the Congress, prompting pointed questions from several party figures.
Supriya Shrinate was among the first to express dissatisfaction, saying she “didn’t find anything… worth appreciating” in the Prime Minister’s address and could not understand “how he (Shashi Tharoor) found one.”
She also argued that Modi’s speech was a “petty speech” aimed at repeatedly criticising the Congress, adding that Tharoor should clarify “what his problem is with fair journalism.”
The sharpest response, however, came from senior leader Sandeep Dikshit, who accused Tharoor of straying from the party’s stand.
Dikshit challenged his colleague directly: “Why are you in Congress?”
He went on to question Tharoor’s political consistency, stating that “Shashi Tharoor’s problem is that I don’t think he knows a lot about the country… If, according to you, someone is doing good for the country by going against the Congress’s policies, then you should follow those policies… Why are you in Congress? Is it only because you are an MP?”
Dikshit further escalated the criticism, suggesting that Tharoor’s position created confusion about his loyalties. “If you really feel that the BJP or PM Modi’s strategies are working better than the party you are in, then you should give an explanation. If you are not giving one, you are a hypocrite,” he said.
The comments were triggered by Tharoor’s remarks on a speech delivered by the Prime Minister Modi at 'Ramnath Goenka Lecture', which he summarised in a post on X. While he flagged parts of the talk for criticism, he also praised certain elements, calling it a speech that “served as both an economic outlook and a cultural call to action, urging the nation to be restless for progress.”
Tharoor pointed out that the Prime Minister presented India not simply as an “emerging market” but as an “emerging model” that had displayed economic resilience.
He also noted Modi’s remark that he was accused of being in “election mode” constantly, but was actually in “emotional mode” to address citizens’ concerns.
Tharoor further highlighted the cultural section of the lecture, observing that the Prime Minister dedicated “a significant part of the speech” to disputing Macaulay’s 200-year legacy of “slave mentality.”
Modi, he said, appealed for a ten-year national effort to reclaim pride in Indian heritage, languages and knowledge systems. Tharoor concluded with a pointed aside: “I wish he had also acknowledged how Ramnath Goenka had used English to raise a voice for Indian nationalism!”
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