Shashi Tharoor attends PM Modi’s lecture amidst cold and cough

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday lauded PM Modi’s call for India to shed the 200-year British legacy of a “slave mentality,” urging the nation “to be restless for progress.”
In the midst of the recently concluded Bihar Assembly polls, Tharoor has been headlining for his open criticism of dynastic politics. For many Congress leaders it was like a dig at the party’s top brass. Following Mahagathbandhan’s drubbing, Tharoor even called for deeper introspection, noting that he had not been invited to campaign for the party in the first place.

The rift amid Tharoor and the Congress was further exposed when the Modi government sent the Congress MP to lead an Operation Sindoor delegation abroad, much to the party’s displeasure.

Interestingly, PM Modi predicted an internal rift within the Congress even as addressing BJP workers from the party headquarters in Delhi, after the Bihar results. He said that there is “deep disappointment and deep anger” brewing inside the party over the top brass’s policies, adding that there is a faction within the party which is growing distant from Congress’s “negative politics.”
The Congress MP braving a cough and cold, attended PM Modi’s address at the Ramnath Goenka Lecture and, in a detailed post on X, showcased PM’s appeal for the nation to free itself from the “mindset of slavery.”

He wrote “A significant part of the speech was dedicated to overturning Macaulay’s 200-year legacy of ‘slave mentality’.
PM Modi appealed for a 10-year national mission to restore pride in India’s heritage, languages, and knowledge systems,” he wrote.
Tharoor welcomed PM Modi’s focus on
post-colonial transformation in the national consciousness throughout his address at the sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture.
Tharoor also noted how PM Modi highlighted India’s transformation on the global stage. He went on saying “PM emphasised that India is no longer merely an ’emerging market’ but an ’emerging model’ for the world, noting its economic resilience.
He spoke of India’s ‘constructive impatience’ for development and strongly pushed for a post-colonial mindset.
The Congress MP observed that PM Modi’s message resonated as both an economic assessment and a cultural directive, encouraging citizens to strive for national improvement.
Further reflecting on the speech, Tharoor shared, “On the whole, the PM’s address served as both an economic outlook and a cultural call to action, urging the nation to be restless for progress.”
Among the various points discussed, Tharoor expressed a personal wish: “I wish he had also acknowledged how Ramnath Goenka had used English to raise a voice for Indian nationalism!”
Reportedly, Tharoor’s attendance at PM’s speech came just days following declaration of the results of the Bihar Assembly polls in which his party faced a rout, winning only 6 of the 61 seats it contested.

News Edit KV Raman