Shashi Tharoor: The new ‘happy-tongue’ hypocrite - Secularism means “don’t offend muslims”

Shashi Tharoor, the former UN diplomat and current minister with the Indian government has now become famous for his ‘happy-tongue’ utterances. Pulled up for his “Nehru’s running commentary….” remark and then again for his “Saudi Arabia interlocutor” shot the poor man must be on guard. This is unfortunate as whatever he said was neither harmful nor worth all the noise the media and the opposition parties made. In fact he is a very erudite, scholarly and articulate person. Qualities that we would like to see in all our politicians.

However, this latest smooth-talking Congress minister, is the latest in the long line of Congressmen who believe Secularism means not offending muslims, but all other communities can be offended under freedom of speech rights. He reveals this philosophy in a debate with Christopher Hitchens (Author: God Is Not Great) some years back. The debates can be viewed here, here, here and here.

1. In the first instance Tharoor narrates a story carried in a Bangalore newspaper about a boy called Mohammad, an “idiot-boy” (No reference or connection to the Prophet as Tharoor confirms) This seemed to have angered muslims who attacked the office and the editor of the newspaper. The editor had to later apologise. Tharoor mentions that even if the article was never intended to refer to Prophet Mohammad, the editor should have been careful enough to avoid misinterpretation and should have been aware that this would cause trouble. Sure, the victim of the violent attacks was wrong and should be the one to apologise. That is freedom of speech according to Tharoor.

2. In the second instance with reference to the Danish cartoons issue, Tharoor continues the same argument. That the Danish paper/cartoonist would have known well the publication of the cartoon would cause a world wide backlash and should have resisted going ahead with it and exercised restraint. Tharoor strongly maintains that free speech/expression should not be used to hurt anyone. I suppose nobody told this scholar that “consensus” does not require a freedom of speech law.

3. It’s the third issue that is striking. The discussion moves to the M.F. Hussain paintings. Here’s where our happy-tongue minister reveals his true self. He argues strongly that it was Hussain’s freedom of expression for which he should not have faced a backlash. Well, obviously Hussain was so blissfully ignorant that his controversial paintings would cause friction or offend a whole community. It needed Mr.Happy-tongue to defend him. But that newspaper editor and the Danish cartoonist shouldn’t have exercised their free expression rights as they would have been aware of the consequences. And that’s not all. Tharoor goes on to state that Hussain paints these Hindu Gods in various forms. That Hussain had once painted Indira Gandhi as Durga Ma ! Tharoor equates painting Indira Gandhi as Durga Ma to nude paintings of Hindu Gods. Even a moron can see that the Indira Gandhi painting would be seen as a compliment rather than an offence. This is how he misleads international audiences with his happy-tongue glib talk.

In the long line of hypocrites who crawl under that stone called Congress, this happy-tongue is the latest acquisition. And to think this man actually wanted to be the Secretary-General of the UN. I have a suggestion, he could always seek that office in the OIC.

Update (Dec 6. 2011): The Youtube links provided above seem to have been removed. You can follow the debate at the new link HERE. That is the first part of 9, follow the page for the remaining parts.