Despite the lack of open support from the Congress party’s top brass and the Kerala leadership, Shashi Tharoor commenced his Malabar tour on Sunday, November 20. His four-day tour through the state’s northern districts is viewed as part of Tharoor’s attempts to be more active in state-level politics. The Member of Parliament (MP) from Thiruvananthapuram, the southernmost district of the state, had lost to Mallikarjun Kharge in the Congress presidential elections in October.
Tharoor’s tour began with a row over a debate programme organised by the Youth Congress Kozhikode district committee, which was cancelled allegedly because of pressure from the Congress leadership. The debate on the topic ‘Sangh Parivar and Challenges to Secularism’ was scheduled to be held on Sunday. While it has been alleged that the programme was cancelled owing to the Congress party’s undeclared ban against Tharoor, former MLA Sabarinadhan KS said in a Facebook that it was the party itself that had decided to conduct the programme in the first place.
“Tharoor would have been able to highlight the secular face of the Congress in Malabar through the programme. But it is learnt through the media that some centres have directed the cancellation of the programme,” the post read. Sabarinathan, who is the state vice president of the Youth Congress, is one of the few confidants of Tharoor in Kerala. Kozhikode MP MK Raghavan is another trusted aide of Tharoor, and is coordinating the former diplomat's Malabar tour.
With the debate programme cancelled, Tharoor will instead be speaking at a seminar organised by a pro-Congress Cultural Forum on Sunday evening. “What I understood is that there were certain inconveniences (in conducting the programme). The Nehru Youth Foundation has expressed their desire to hold a similar event on the same topic and I will be attending that. Anyway, I have plenty of programmes to attend in Kozhikode. I don't fear anyone, no one needs to fear me either,” he told the media on his arrival in Kozhikode on Saturday.
Responding to the controversy surrounding the cancelled programme, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K Sudhakaran said that the news that the KPCC leadership has banned Tharoor from attending the programme is baseless. “Tharoor is undisputedly a tall leader of the Indian National Congress. The KPCC would wholeheartedly support his presence in political programmes anywhere in the state,” a Facebook post by Sudhakaran read. Opposition Leader VD Satheesan also told the media that there were no attempts to exclude Tharoor, adding that there was no such practice in the Congress.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that the Kannur District Congress Committee too has reportedly backed out from holding a talk on 'Democracy Secularism and Politics: Nehruvian Perspective', which was scheduled to be held on Wednesday.
Tharoor began his Malabar tour by visiting MT Vasudevan Nair, the doyen of Malayalam literature, accompanied by MK Raghavan. He also had dinner with Thamassery Bishop Mar Remigiose Inchananiyil on Saturday, again in the presence of Raghavan.
Earlier in the year, while running for the post of Congress president, Tharoor hadn’t received support from the state’s senior party leaders.