Congress MP's veiled dig at Tharoor over Emergency article: ‘Bird becoming parrot’
Shashi Tharoor’s article, titled “Heeding the Lessons of India’s Emergency” has triggered discomfort within the Congress
Congress MP Manickam Tagore on Thursday (July 10) took an indirect dig at his party colleague and fellow MP Shashi Tharoor for “repeating BJP lines” for his sharply worded article on the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.
Also read: Tharoor’s Emergency article sparks unease within Congress; BJP showers praise
Tharoor’s article, titled “Heeding the Lessons of India’s Emergency”, published by Project Syndicate on July 8, has triggered discomfort within the Congress for its one-sided focus on the 1975–77 period under Indira Gandhi, while remaining conspicuously silent on concerns surrounding the current political climate under the Narendra Modi-led government.
Tharoor talks about press censorship
The article reflects on the suppression of democratic freedoms during the Emergency, describing it as “a 21-month period of authoritarian rule that shattered the world’s faith in India’s democratic credentials.”
Also read: 'War of birds': Congress-Tharoor rift deepens with 'bird' posts on social media
Tharoor details forced sterilisations, press censorship, judicial capitulation, and extrajudicial violence under Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi. He cites the Shah Commission extensively and calls the period a “dark chapter in Indian history.”
Bird analogy
Last month, Tharoor, who was part of Centre’s delegation of MPs to foreign countries to spread the message of India’s action against Pakistan in Operation Sindoor, had praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had upset the Congress leadership.
Responding to his critics in the Congress, Tharoor had drawn bird analogy by posting on X (formerly Twitter), “Don’t ask permission to fly. The wings are yours. And the sky belongs to no one”.
Now, Tharoor’s colleague Tagore has used the same analogy to take an indirect dig at the MP and wondered whether “bird was becoming a parrot”.
“When a Colleague starts repeating BJP lines word for word, you begin to wonder — is the Bird becoming a parrot? Mimicry is cute in birds, not in politics,” Tagore wrote on X.