Must learn to be less thin-skinned: Tharoor on India lodging protest over Singapore PM''s remarks
New Delhi, Feb 18: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday said it was most unseemly for the Ministry of External Affairs to "summon" the envoy of a friendly country like Singapore over remarks by their prime minister to their own Parliament, and asserted that "we must learn to be less thin-skinned".
Tharoor's remarks came after India on Thursday lodged a strong protest with Singapore over the comments made by its Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong that almost half of the lawmakers in the Lok Sabha have criminal charges pending against them and suggesting a decline in the country's democratic polity from "Nehru's India".
"Most unseemly for MEA to summon the HC of a friendly country like Singapore over some remarks by their PM to their own Parliament," Tharoor said in a tweet.
"He (Lee) was making a general (& largely accurate) point. Given the stuff our own pols utter, we must learn to be less thin-skinned!" the former minister of state for external affairs said.
"We should have handled the matter with a statement saying 'we heard with interest the PM's remarks. But we don't comment on other countries' internal matters, nor on debates in foreign Parliaments, & urge everyone to follow the same principle.' Far more effective & less offensive," Tharoor said in another tweet.
Singapore's high commissioner to India Simon Wong was called to the Ministry of External Affairs and he was conveyed that the comments were "uncalled for" and that India objected to them strongly, according to sources.
In his nearly 40-minute speech, the Singaporean prime minister had talked about how a democratic system needs lawmakers with integrity and invoked India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to stress how democracy should work in the city-state.
Most unseemly for MEA to summon the HC of a friendly country like Singapore over some remarks by their PM to their own Parliament: https://t.co/vbHN69YTJa
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) February 18, 2022
He was making a general (&largely accurate) point. Given the stuff our own pols utter,we must learn to be less thin-skinned!
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
