'Is bird becoming a parrot?', Cong MP taunts Tharoor over 'revisiting' dark era of Emergency

New Delhi, July 10 (IANS) Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s column on the Emergency, spotlighting the blatant abuse of power by the then regime in 1975, has invited reactions from the grand old party on expected lines.

Fellow Congress parliamentarian Manickam Tagore took note of Tharoor’s open acknowledgement and criticism of the ‘dark era’ under the Congress regime and took a veiled jibe, saying ‘mimicry may look cute in birds but not in politics', a stinging remark reflecting the bitter exchange between the two MPs earlier.

Taking a sarcastic tone at the Thiruvananthapuram MP, Tagore wrote on X, “When a colleague starts repeating BJP lines word for word, you begin to wonder — is the bird becoming a parrot? Mimicry is cute in birds, not in politics.”

Tharoor’s op-ed on the ‘murder of democracy’ and ‘unspeakable atrocities’ during the Emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, has seen muted backlash from the grand old party, for now but it is likely to grow more intense, thereby aggravating the already strained ties between him and the party.

Shashi Tharoor, in his Op-ed in a leading daily on Thursday, highlighted how the Emergency exposed the ‘fragility and frailty’ of the institutions, even in a robust democracy like India.

“The vibrant cacophony of Indian public life, so accustomed to vigorous debate and free expression, had been replaced by an eerie silence. This reminded us that a government can lose its moral compass and sense of accountability to the people it purports to serve,” he wrote in an article.

Notably, the two Congress lawmakers - Tharoor and Tagore had an acrimonious exchange on social media, some time ago, over the ‘free bird’ pitch. Tharoor wrote about ‘birds not seeking permission to fly’, to which Tagore had replied with a metaphorical warning that ‘vultures and eagles are there in the sky to target the free bird’.

It is to be noted that there has been a growing unease and discomfort within the Congress party over Tharoor’s actions and remarks, often leaving the former embarrassed and making it 'dissociate and distance' itself from him, on a couple of occasions.

The fresh instance of Tharoor criticising the imposition of Emergency by the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government has further deepened the differences and disquiet within the party.

--IANS

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