Shashi Tharoor scrapes through, but let him be careful

O J George
It is pass for Shashi Tharoor this time for his ‘holy cows’ and ‘cattle class’ comments after he met Congress President Sonia Gandhi and other leaders. It is a closed chapter by now.He and many others had attempted to wish away the bad referencing. All attempts had boomeranged on those who tried to camouflage the verbiage. In fact, the problem was more with the ‘holy cows’ reference than the ‘cattle class’ comment. Shashi Tharoor and some others had said holy cow is not an individual but any institution or idea. That may not be fully correct. Go to Editing by Bruce Westley. He has included persons also in the category of sacred cows, which is nothing different from holy cows.In Websters, a sacred cow is a person, institution, custom etc unreasonably held to be beyond criticism, something that cannot be violated.In the Congress scheme of things, no one can survive by joking about the high command. K.Karunakaran and son Muraleedharan had said something like ‘Madamma’ which can be translated as madam, but ‘Madamma’ has a sort of bad connotation. Karunakaran somehow scraped through. Muraleedharan is yet to be rehabilitated.Something should be learnt from P.Chidambaram who was with the team of Tamil Nadu leaders who met the Prime Minister on Tuesday. They wanted to highlight the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. It was expected that they would make mention about the Mullapperiyar dam issue as well. We don’t know whether they, in fact, made a mention.But Chidambaram, in public, completely ruled out any reference to the Mullapperiyar issue. Afterall, it was a decision taken by a Cabinet colleague which cannot be questioned by another.Shashi Tharoor was wallowing in wilderness after losing his moorings in the UN echelons. It was the Congress which went out of the way to rehabilitate him.He has to follow the precepts so that he basks in the glory of his accomplishments otherwise.