Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has once again landed in the soup as an arrest warrant has been issued against him by the Trivandrum Court after he failed to appear in the court, in a defamation case alleging that he had maligned Hindu women in one of the books authored by him.
Kerala: A Trivandrum Court has issued an arrest warrant for Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in connection with a case filed against him for allegedly defaming Hindu women in one of his books. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/DHrA3tTgiK
— ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2019
The Chief Judicial Magistrate issued the arrest warrant on Saturday against the Thiruvananthapuram MP on charges of defamation of Hindu women in one of his books. Despite the notice of the court in this case, Tharoor neither appeared himself nor any lawyer representing him appeared before the magistrate, after which the court issued an arrest warrant against him.
The defamation case was filed by person named Sandhya Sreekumar, who has alleged that Shashi Tharoor had defamed women of the Nair community by portraying them in bad light in his 1989 book ‘The Great Indian Novel’, a satirical novel that makes fun of the political class in India.
Although the book was published decades ago, it comes back to haunt the author occasionally. During 2014 and 2019 elections, Tharoor was attacked citing the book. Even the CPI had asked him to apologise for the same. The controversial lines from the book are, “In Kerala, the men of Nair community realise that their wives are free to receive them by seeing if another man’s slippers aren’t outside her door.” These lines are spoken by king Pandu of Mahabharata, the father of Pandavas, while talking to his wife Kunthi. It is alleged that Tharoor deliberately tried to defame Nair women by putting the statement into Pandu’s mouth. The book narrates the story of Mahabharata in the context of the Indian independence movement and the earlier decades of Independent India.
Earlier this year, Kolkata Magistrate had issued an arrest warrant against Shashi Tharoor for his ‘Hindu Pakistan’ remark based on a case filed by Advocate Sumeet Chowdhary. Tharoor had received massive criticism for his comment that BJP will enable Hindu Pakistan if it comes to power in 2019 elections.
In January 2019, Tharoor had also made derogatory remarks for the Hindu festival of Kumbh. The Trivandrum MP had posted a tweet mocking the tradition of Kumbh by stating that Ganga has to be kept clean while one also expects it to purge the devotees of their sins.
This is not the first time that Tharoor has hurt the sentiments of Hindus. He has often been critical of Hinduism and the demands raised by Hindus. Apart from keeping a stoic silence on the atrocious murders of Hindu activists in Kerala, he has also gratuitously claimed that no ‘good Hindu’ would want to build a Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Later, he also went on a tirade against Ram Temple at the Ramjanmabhoomi by sermonising Hindus to follow their scriptures.
