India has chaiwala as PM because of Nehru, says Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor said, "If today we have a chaiwala as prime minister, it is because Nehru ji made it possible."

Shashi Tharoor was speaking at an event to relaunch his book 'Nehru: The Invention of India'. (Photo: ANI)


  • Tharoor said there are astonishing amount of lies on internet that undermine Nehru
  • He said if government can boast about Mangalyaan, it is because Nehru created ISRO
  • Sonia Gandhi alleged that Nehru's legacy is being undermined by those in power

Not alien to controversies triggered by his comments, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is in the news once again. This time it is for an indirect comment that he made on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while praising the country's first PM- Jawaharlal Nehru.

Speaking about Nehru on the eve of his birth anniversary (November 14), Tharoor said it is because of the institutional structure created by Nehru that today a chaiwala (tea seller) can also become India's prime minister.

"If today we have a chaiwala as prime minister, it is because Nehru ji made it possible to create the institutional structures through which any Indian can aspire to rise to the highest office in the land," he said.

The Congress leader added, "We've seen a consorted campaign of vilification, of calumny, astonishing amount of lies that are out there on the internet. Why is there this desire to undermine such a great son of India [Nehru], somebody who laid the foundations for what we have created?"

Tharoor went on to add that if the government today is able to boast about the Mars Orbiter Mission- Mangalyaan, it is because the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was set up by Nehru.

He said, "If today the government can boast about Mangalyaan, ask who created ISRO. Who decided that even poor India could dare to aim for the skies? Who created the IITs that sent so many bright young men to Silicon Valley that 40 per cent of the start ups there are helmed by Indians?"

Meanwhile, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that the Nehruvian legacy is being "undermined" by those presently in power, who have "contempt" for the country's first prime minister for all that he did to build an India which they want to change for the "worse".

Speaking at an event to relaunch Tharoor's book 'Nehru: The Invention of India', the former Congress president said Jawaharlal Nehru, as India's first prime minister, "consolidated democracy and entrenched the basic values of India's polity -- values to which we are still proud to lay claim."

"What are these values. Shashi Tharoor summarises them as the core pillars of Nehruvianism -- democratic institutional building, staunch pan-Indian secularism, socialist economics and foreign policy of non-alignment. These values were integral to a vision of Indianness that is fundamentally being challenged today," she said on the eve of Nehru's birth anniversary.

Recently, the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) criticized Tharoor for a comment that he made during the Bengaluru Literature Festival. Quoting an unnamed RSS source that was published in an article in 2012, Tharoor said, "PM Modi is like a scorpion sitting on a Shiva Linga. You can neither remove it with your hands, nor can you hit it with your slipper."

The BJP had demanded an apology from him for "insulting" the PM and "hurting" sentiments of the people. Furthermore, BJP leader Rajeev Babbar filed a criminal defamation complaint against Tharoor in Delhi's Patiala House Court, saying that his religious sentiments were hurt.

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