Close-up with the verbivore

It was the identity of a verbivore and a statesman that I and many others carried at the back of our minds, as we stood cramped in the long line leading to the auditorium at PILF where the anxious audience awaited to have a glimpse of and hear Shashi Tharoor. He was visiting after 4 years and little did we know that we were up to knowing the man behind the political masking, the UN under secretary-general, animal activist and someone with profound philosophies and daring to withstand by them in the face of what looked like a crisis to his fizzling party.

In conversation with him was Manu Pillai, an equally impressive young historian.  

And he rightly started with what is the man who passes bills, an eloquent speaker still doing with Congress? While the audience was in splits, Tharoor in all composure quipped that the reason was his ‘principles'.

And ironically, when the author has written books like ‘Why I am a Hindu?’ supposedly siding with the saffron bastion, he defended it by saying- Hinduism cannot be the way someone advocates it, it is an individual choice, that is the core philosophy of Hinduism and the ways that one exercises can be varied. There are multiple schools of Hinduism. And he gains his ideology from the liberal thinker, one of the very first Hindu scholars, Swami Vivekananda.

Another impressive stance was him saying, “I chose a party that went close to my ideology.”

He has also been trolled for hailing BJP or the PM by his fellow Congressmen too. To this, he readily justified that political differences can well be within the country, but those end at the borders. ("We have had some really good foreign ministers from the opposition party as well," he said.) And since the PM is representing India, he would like the outsiders to respect him and the country’s flag that he is carrying.

His books describe India of the past that was more tolerant and so he wants the youth to read the book from 30 years ago to relish and feel like what India was like back then.

He also believed that had the political heavyweights kept the core ideologies of the freedom struggle at the forefront in decision making, and not the religious ones, we wouldn’t have had another Pakistan. Going further, we do not want to have a Hindu- Pakistan. That would make Jinnah happy to have divided the subcontinent on religious propaganda, he quips.

He closed by reiterating what he said to the Americans, that India is not a melting pot; but a thali of sumptuous foods in different bowls, that do not mingle but come together to give one a satisfying meal!