Paulo Coelho, the world-famous writer and lyricist, once said, “A lie has many versions. The truth has only one.” This simple sentence came back to my mind last week when a controversy broke out over Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, and the first-ever Veer Savarkar International Impact Award.
Tharoor publicly denied that he had given his consent to accept the award. The organisation that instituted the award, however, claimed exactly the opposite. Its representatives had met Tharoor at his residence and finalised everything, including the award ceremony in Delhi. Since truth can only be one, it is left to the readers to decide who is telling the truth and who is not.
Before any major award is announced—be it a Padma award or an international honour—the recipient is always sounded out in advance. Consent is taken quietly. Only after that does the public announcement follow.
Just last week, I watched a video released by the Swedish Nobel Committee. An official called this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Venezuelan Opposition leader María Corina Machado, just five minutes before the official announcement. He apologised for waking her up at night and asked her to keep the news secret for five minutes, until the announcement was made in Stockholm.
In any case, why should the High-Range Development Society (HRDS) India, which instituted the Savarkar award, not take Tharoor into confidence? I first heard about it during the diplomatic gold-smuggling controversy in Kerala, when Swapna Suresh, an accused in the case, was suddenly employed by the society.
Earlier this year, while attending a Malayali function in Delhi, every participant was given a glossy, thick notebook titled “The Prime Minister: Narendra Modi”. It looked like a diary. But there was one odd thing. The notebook did not even carry the full form of HRDS. Instead, it carried more than 400 photographs—big and small—of Modi. I wonder if any diary has ever been published with so many pictures of a single individual.
It is difficult to believe that Tharoor was offered the Savarkar award casually or without careful thought. Such decisions are not spontaneous. They are planned, deliberated upon, and cleared at the highest levels. It is also difficult to believe that the Prime Minister’s Office was unaware of it.
This makes the episode more curious because Tharoor is the author of “The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India”, published in 2018, four years after Modi became Prime Minister. In that book, Tharoor argued that “Modi says one thing and does another.” He was openly critical of Hindutva and of V.D. Savarkar. It was Savarkar who first argued that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations, an idea that Mohammed Ali Jinnah later adopted.
Yet, nobody would have been entirely shocked if Tharoor had accepted the award. His relationship with the BJP often resembles that of Tom and Jerry, the famous cartoon cat and mouse. They appear to be sworn enemies, but when a common enemy appears, they join hands. They fight, but never fatally harm each other.
I have been reading Tharoor for decades. I was a regular reader of his column in The Hindu while he was with the United Nations. I still remember my shock in 1995 when he wrote a column justifying the hysteria over idols of Lord Ganesh drinking milk. Rationalists explained the phenomenon as capillary action. Tharoor chose to justify the frenzy. That was when I learnt one thing clearly: Tharoor can justify almost anything.
One major political blunder was committed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he supported Tharoor’s candidature for the post of UN Secretary-General against South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon. The problem was not Tharoor’s competence, but the fact that he was fielded against another Asian candidate. Tharoor lost, and soon after, lost his UN job as well.
It was at that point that the Congress party fielded him from Thiruvananthapuram, ignoring the claims of several loyal party workers. The Kerala capital has a history of electing high-profile outsiders. It once elected V.K. Krishna Menon, who spent most of his life in London, as an Independent with Left support.
True, Tharoor won the seat four times. But even his political rivals admit that his victories were possible largely because of the solid support he received from the United Democratic Front (UDF), especially the Latin Christian community. O. Rajagopal of the BJP, who once nearly defeated him, openly said so.
Last year, Tharoor defeated BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar by a narrow margin. Charisma alone could not have saved him. Without the Congress organisation and UDF votes, he would not have survived.
He once contested for the post of Congress president but was roundly defeated by Mallikarjun Kharge. Kharge, who could have been Chief Minister long ago, proved his strength as party president by opposing the BJP without compromise and standing firmly for secularism and social justice.
For a brief period, Tharoor seemed to believe that he could be the next Chief Minister of Kerala. The campaign fizzled out almost as soon as it began.
Today, many wonder what exactly Tharoor stands for. He often makes statements that undermine the official position of his own party. For all his brilliance, he lost his job as a Union Minister over allegations linked to the purchase of a cricket team.
During the recent Bihar elections, when the Congress-led INDIA alliance was fighting the BJP, Tharoor spoke against dynastic politics, mentioning Rahul Gandhi and his sister. He seemed to forget that his own political career was made possible by the same Congress leadership.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Delhi recently, Tharoor accepted the invitation to attend a dinner, ignoring the fact that the Leaders of the Opposition in both Houses of Parliament were not deliberately invited. Like Prime Minister Modi, he seems to attend Parliament when it suits him.
In the recent local body elections, the BJP captured the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation. The Prime Minister reacted as if the BJP had won the entire state. Ordinarily, Tharoor should have treated this as a personal political setback. Instead, he appeared strangely pleased.
That is Shashi Tharoor in a nutshell—international when he should be national, national when he should be local. For him, politics often appears to be about glamour and visibility rather than the everyday struggles of ordinary people. In short, Shashi Tharoor is a paradoxical MP: eloquent, intelligent, admired across the world, yet uncertain at home. He talks big, but often stands on feet of clay.