On today's episode, Abhinav Khare delves into the lost cause of pseudo secularism in which Shashi Tharoor has lost support from his Islamist supremacist friends
The Left and Islamist supremacists have been using each other to establish their own selfish interests. Shashi Tharoor of late has used his friends in media to show how these protests at Shaheen Bagh are secular. He wanted to show how the entire country is together. Unfortunately, the Islamists have completely destroyed his political agenda. There were many slogans supporting Pakistan and degrading Hinduism. In a secular nation, we all have our freedom to believe in any religion we want, but definitely not at the cost of destroying Hinduism. In a recent incident however we saw how Shashi Tharoor failed to gain support from his Islamic supremacist friends.
In the past we had seen Tharoor speaking against the La ilaha illallah chat being used during the CAA protests. He had tweeted stating that the protests should not give rise to Islamist extremism as well. This probably was the reason why he was faced with the same chant when he went to join hands with his fellow Jihadists in Shaheen Bagh. But then, his Islamist friends ended up calling him a soft bigot.
The reason he was accused of soft bigotry was because he labelled this as “their fight” and wanted people to stop telling them what to do. But on the day the video was shot, he failed to win the support of his Islamist friends who thought him to be a flag bearer for Hindutva. In the modern day supposedly “Secular” Indian circles, Hindutva is the synonym for Hindu extremism which is often compared to Jihad and forceful Christian conversions. However, Tharoor’s attempts to pacify his Islamist friends have fallen flat. Let’s now wait and watch to see if we find him chanting La ilaha illallah or we find sense prevail in him and find him actually helping the government do its job, something which is his mandated work as an elected Member of Parliament.
About Abhinav Khare
Abhinav Khare is the CEO of Asianet News Network and also the host of a daily show named Deep Dive with AK. He has a lifetime collection of books and gadgets and has already pinged more than hundred cities around the globe.
He is a tech entrepreneur, who is passionate about policy, technology, economy and philosophy from ancient India. He earned an MS Engineering from the ETH Zurich and an MBA Finance from the London Business School.
Last Updated Jan 15, 2020, 12:50 PM IST