Shashi Tharoor says ‘good Hindus’ wouldn’t like Ram temple at disputed site, faces flak, counterattacks ‘BJP trolls’
Shashi Tharoor, the Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, stoked controversy by his remarks on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue. He said “no good Hindu would like to see a Ram temple built by demolishing someone else’s place of worship.
Speaking on Hindu Litfest in Chennai, on Saturday, Tharoor said, “On the Ram Janmabhoomi, as a Hindu obviously I am very conscious that a vast majority of my fellow Hindus believe that this was the specific birthplace of Ram and for that reason most good Hindus would want to see a Ram temple at the site where Ram was supposed to be born. But I also believe that no good Hindu would have wanted to see that temple built by demolishing somebody else’s place of worship.”
His comments drew immediate condemnation from right-wing voices across the country.
Talking to the media, Mahant Dharamdas, one of the litigants in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, which is being heard at the Supreme Court now, said Tharoor was opposing the Ram temple because he is a Congressman. He reminded that earlier, Congress’s Kapil Sibal wanted the hearing on the case to be deferred until the general election in 2019.
BJP’s Nalin Kohli to slammed Tharoor for his remarks. He said “Who are the Congress or Tharoor to decide? Who are they to certify who is a good Hindu and who is bad Hindu? How can they play with the faith of crores of people?”
Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said he was “astonished” to hear that Tharoor believes that “true Hindus don't want a Ram temple in Ayodhya”. He said, “This could be Tharoor’s or Rahul Gandhi's views but not of the common people. This shows how cut off they are from reality.”
After facing flak from several quarters, Tharoor took to Twitter to clarify his stance and condemned – what he called – “malicious distortions of his words”. On Sunday, he tweeted a series of tweets:
I condemn the malicious distortion of my words by some media in the service of political masters. I said: “most Hindus would want a temple at what they believe to be Ram’s birthplace. But no good Hindu would want it to be built by destroying another’s place of worship.”
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 15, 2018
I was asked for my personal opinion at a literary festival & gave it as such. I am not a Spokesperson for my party & did not claim to be speaking for @incindia. https://t.co/aKeJvdLoqG
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 15, 2018
classic Goebbelsian disinformation: Take a statement, twist its words into something that wasn’t said, then attack the distortion as if it’s really what was said. When you need a distraction it’s so easy to manufacture one if you have no respect for truth. https://t.co/HtJEwQGSL6
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 15, 2018
Then on Monday, he tweeted again on this issue, this time targeting “BJP trolls” with a few lines from a poem by late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
On the substance of what I said, let me remind BJP trolls of these lines by Atal Bihari Vajpayee:
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) October 15, 2018
कोई बतलाए काबुल मे जाकर कितनी मस्जिद तोडी?
भूभाग नहीं, शत–शत मानव के हृदय जीतने का निश्चय।
हिन्दू तन–मन, हिन्दू जीवन, रग–रग हिन्दू मेरा परिचय!
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