Where does Shashi Tharoor fit in Kerala Congress? His timing is always off

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor | ThePrint

How do you solve a problem like Shashi Tharoor? This has been the general sentiment in Kerala Congress following the Thiruvananthapuram MP’s controversial column in The New Indian Express. The faction-ridden state Congress leaders, who may not agree on most things, were quick to close ranks against Tharoor.

In a remarkable turn of events, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi summoned Tharoor to Delhi and held a closed-door meeting with the four-term MP. This was also in light of Tharoor’s comments backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States, which went against the party’s official line.

Notwithstanding the tête-à-tête, a seemingly miffed Tharoor continued to stand by his assertions in the article, where he extended a back-handed compliment to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) government in Kerala for belatedly finding virtues in private capital and rolling the red carpet for businesses.

It was left to the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) chief K Sudhakaran to play down the controversy and come to the rescue of Tharoor, against the collective sentiment prevailing within the party. The diplomat-turned-politician had most recently backed Sudhakaran’s continuation as KPCC chief, and it was read as an act of quid pro quo.

Tharoor’s column

Shashi Tharoor’s column on Marxists fostering a business-friendly environment in Kerala came as a much-needed validation for the Left, dealing with crises on multiple fronts. Tharoor was bullish on Kerala’s growth in the startup sector and ease of doing business rankings, citing the Global Startup Ecosystem Report and the Centre’s Business Promotion Action Plan (BPAP), respectively. Tharoor’s data wasn’t entirely reliable, although he wasn’t wrong to cite it either.

A close reading of the opinion article suggests that Tharoor was taking state industries minister P Rajeev at face value, especially on the time taken to start a business in Kerala. Now, KPCC leaders may have ignored the write-up, but for the Left government using it for propaganda purposes. It came as a huge setback for Kerala Congress’ efforts to corner the government on growth parameters.

Conversely, the Left, too, may not have sung Tharoor’s praises had they understood his column in its entirety. With lines such as “The communists in Kerala, like their counterparts in West Bengal at the beginning of the century, understood that the path to growth and prosperity for their people lies in capitalism, entrepreneurship, and initiative, not in red flags, strikes, and agitations”, it seemed Tharoor was criticising Kerala Marxists for their ideological flexibility.

Speculations galore

Many theories have been floated regarding the column. While some put it down to the subtle art of ‘balancing’, Shashi Tharoor has always been a glass-half-full politician with an open mind. So, unlike run-of-the-mill leaders, there is nothing surprising about Tharoor’s issue-based backing of either Modi’s foreign policy or the Kerala Left’s change of tack. However, the sheer timing of it may have fuelled some of the speculations.

It was only in the first half of the Parliament’s Budget session that Modi took Tharoor’s name to get back at Rahul Gandhi’s criticism of his foreign policy. Moreover, the Left in Kerala had really been under the pump when Tharoor’s column gave it an unexpected fillip. Even Congress leaders such as KS Sabarinathan and Mathew Kuzhalnadan—perceptibly close to Tharoor—could not come forward to defend the Congress Working Committee (CWC) member, since it came at a most inopportune time for the party.

Even the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) took exception to Tharoor’s claims in the article, pointing out how the Left had pursued negative politics against the development initiatives of the successive United Democratic Front (UDF) governments in the past. Tharoor was quick to address these concerns and published two Facebook posts in a day to make amends, recalling the contributions of Oommen Chandy to the Kerala startup ecosystem among other development initiatives.

Tharoor’s motivations

While Shashi Tharoor’s motivations are hotly debated, it is true that he has fallen behind in the list of Congress’ chief ministerial hopefuls. When Pinarayi Vijayan won a successive term as chief minister in 2021, bucking the four-decade-old revolving door politics of Kerala, it was widely argued that Congress had to project Tharoor as its leader to have any shot at power in 2026.

And he seemed to have made some headway on this front a few years ago, until his comments qualifying the Hamas as terrorists at a Palestine solidarity rally organised by the IUML disrupted that momentum. Tharoor went on to make a huge impact when he contested against Mallikarjun Kharge for the post of Congress president, winning over a hundred votes from Kerala, catching the state Congress leaders by surprise.

With the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s waning popularity, however, the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, VD Satheesan, has been positioning himself as the prime contender for chief ministership. Even though Ramesh Chennithala has made a renewed bid for the position after undergoing a Nair rebranding. Of course, there is KC Venugopal as the third choice in the event of a squabble between the two, leaving Tharoor fourth in the pecking order—as things stand today.

Third Way politician

Regardless of Shashi Tharoor’s motivations, his article and the controversy in its wake have once again catapulted him to political centre stage.

There had been a restlessness about Tharoor lately, possibly due to a lack of clarity on his role in the Congress. Along with his abrupt removal as president of the All India Professionals’ Congress (AIPC), Tharoor was unhappy with his sidelining in Kerala despite being made a full-time CWC member along with KC Venugopal.

Nevertheless, Tharoor is a huge draw, attracting instant crowds unlike any other Congress leader in Kerala today. And the shrewd politician in him understands that. In any case, he was never going to fit the mould of the regular Kerala neta, in a fiercely polarised polity. Tharoor was always a Third Way politician, much like a Bill Clinton in the United States or a Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, who could add a certain constituency to the party’s core base to take it across the line.

Mass leader

It’s no wonder that Shashi Tharoor is trying to cultivate his base among the burgeoning floating voters, like VS Achuthanandan once did, to present his case when the opportunity presents itself. As things stand, no Congress leader in Kerala has a mass following across the state, and that always leaves scope for Tharoor to turn the tables on his challengers.

Satheesan—who is no less shrewd a politician—understands this, which is why he makes it a point to keep Tharoor away from the thick of things in Kerala. Satheesan attending the Invest Kerala Global Summit over the weekend in Kochi, which the state government expected the Opposition to miss, may have been an outcome of Tharoor’s column.

The positive politics espoused by him was once considered Satheesan’s forte as well—as a votary of green politics and initiatives such as ‘Say No to Hartal’. At some point, however, Satheesan’s LoP role made him a hostage to partisan and petty politics. Increasingly, there is a sense that the Congress is being led astray by the likes of Jamaat-e-Islami to adopt far-Left positions, discarded even by the CPI-M in Kerala. Little wonder, then, that Tharoor’s liberal positions may often fall foul of it.

Of course, the Congress MP also needs to take positions after studying the pros and cons of issues instead of jumping to defend anything in the name of ‘development’. A case in point is his initial backing of the K-Rail or Silverline project, which even an expert technocrat like E Sreedharan objected to on account of its environmental and flooding concerns. Tharoor’s stance changed only when he came around the Congress’ viewpoint.

What the future holds

There is more than a year left for the assembly elections, and that is a long time in politics. Shashi Tharoor getting an audience with Rahul Gandhi, even as the Kerala leaders bayed for his blood, came as a disappointment to the likes of Satheesan. Of course, it was a long-pending appointment that the MP had sought with Gandhi, which came about under these circumstances. Tharoor’s insistence to keep KC Venugopal out of it also came as a blow to the latter, and, by extension, the state leaders.

Notably, Veekshanam, the Congress mouthpiece in Kerala, took a markedly different line from K Sudhakaran in attacking Tharoor. Jaison Joseph, editor of Veekshanam, stated that the publication’s position was in line with party workers’ sentiments. Meanwhile, Malayala Manorama reported that Rahul Gandhi didn’t give any assurances to Tharoor on the issues he raised, particularly about being assigned a role in the organisation.

At 68, Shashi Tharoor may not be too old to bide his time. But it seems unlikely that he would be able to contest for the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram anymore. Despite the favourable political climate in Kerala today, it isn’t certain that Congress will form a government in 2026. Whether or not he can hold on to his ambition remains to be seen, although Tharoor really doesn’t have many options under the present circumstances.

Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)