Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has once again praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, inviting side-eyes from his own party on Tuesday.
In a post on X, Throor made notes on the PM’s address on Ramnath Goenka and said that he was “glad to have been in the audience despite battling a bad cold and cough.”
The Congress MP had skipped a party meeting called by its leadership to review the SIR exercises and chose to accept the Indian Express’s invite to Modi’s Ramnath Goenka Lecture instead.
Attended PM @narendramodi’s #RamnathGoenkaLecture at the invitation of @IndianExpress last night. He spoke of India's "constructive impatience" for development and strongly pushed for a post-colonial mindset.
The PM emphasized that India is no longer just an 'emerging market'… pic.twitter.com/97HwGgQ67N
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) November 18, 2025
Summarising the lecture, Tharoor said, “The PM emphasized that India is no longer just an 'emerging market' but an 'emerging model' for the world, noting its economic resilience. PM Modi said he’d been accused of being in “election mode” all the time, but he was really in “emotional mode” to redress the problems of the people.”
He also gave his two cents on what he personally thought would have made the speech better, saying, “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. I wish he had also acknowledged how Ramnath Goenka had used English to raise a voice for Indian nationalism!"
This is not the first time the MP got flak for praising the ruling BJP government and the prime minister.
The rift began much earlier when Tharoor was invited as part of the delegation for Operation Sindoor despite Congress not recommending his name. The MP had also praised the PM’s handling of the crisis, leading to criticism from his party.
More recently, in an article titled ‘Indian Politics is a family business’, he put his party on the spot when he questioned its history of dynastic politics.
The MP is also attending the speech just days after the Bihar assembly polls where his party and its coalition suffered a major defeat.
Tharoor has however denied allegations of trying to party-jump. In June, he said that him praising Modi is "not a sign of my leaping to join his party... as some people have, unfortunately, been implying. It is a statement of national unity..." |
