Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday termed “thoughtful” and “fair” an analysis on X on a contrast between his and Rahul Gandhi's ideological tendencies within the party.
“The problem is not their coexistence. The problem is Congress’s inability to choose, integrate, or execute either coherently,” the X user @CivitasSameer wrote, as part of a long thread of posts that the Kerala MP shared.
The analysis said Rahul Gandhi's focus purportedly on rural issues is a “devastating shift” for the party, while Tharoor's ideas are more “urban-facing” — going on to theorise how that affects the party.
“Thank you [for] this thoughtful analysis. There has always been more than one tendency in the party; your framing is fair, and reflective of a certain perception of the current reality,” Tharoor wrote, sharing the thread on his X handle.
“Tharoor broadly aligns with a 90's era Congress tendency that was urban-facing, institutionally oriented, and reform-compatible,” Civitas Sameer wrote. The person argued that these ideas emerged during an economic transition when India had “elite-led governance, not as virtue, but as a historical circumstance”.
The argument named former PMs PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh (for his term finance minister under Rao), former minister SM Krishna, and former planning panel deputy chief Montek Singh Ahluwalia as people who operated within this framework. “Their politics relied on policy, institutions, and administrative competence, not mass mobilisation or cultural embedding,” the post read.
Asserting that these “urban technocratic leaders” are sidelined by the Congress, the analysis claimed they “gained more recognition and respect from the RW (right wing)” in recent times — a reference apparently to the Centre's ruling BJP led by PM Narendra Modi.
The X thread attributed to Rahul Gandhi this ideological turn: “Congress’s post-2010 attempt to reposition itself as a rural, grievance-driven mass party to counter BJP dominance. This was a reactive, yet devastating shift that can be shown through the electoral results themselves.”
The Congress most recently lost in Bihar as a junior member with Tejashwi Yadav-led RJD and some INDIA bloc parties' Mahagathbandhan. The Congress focused on rural and caste-centric issues, as did the BJP-JDU-led NDA, but could not convince the electorate to unseat Nitish Kumar's government.
Even more recently, the Centre's ruling BJP defeated an entrenched Left alliance in Kerala's local body elections in Thiruvananthapuram, which is Tharoor's Lok Sabha segment. The Congress-led UDF otherwise delivered major upsets to the ruling LDF in Kerala, but Thiruvananthapuram gave the BJP a foothold in the state capital.
Tharoor congratulated both the UDF and the BJP and described the results as a celebration of the state’s democratic ethos.
The analysis of the Congress he shared on Monday further termed ironic that Rahul Gandhi is “leading this rural turn” for the party when he is “among the most elite and insulated figures in Indian politics”.
“Born into a dynastic family, symbolic rural politics without lived or organisational depth lacks any credibility,” is how the thread re-shared by Tharoor described Rahul Gandhi.
It's not been too long since Tharoor wrote an article listing the Nehru-Gandhi family as an example of dynastic politics that he described as determinantal to merit. He did not cite any example from BJP leaders' families in that write-up, and earned praise from the ruling party.
“Tharoor, by contrast, shows alignment between background, political language, and audience. His increasing focus on SM platforms (particularly Instagram) and digital media reflects awareness of political fit, not ideological drift,” the re-shared post added.
While Tharoor, who lost the party presidential election to Mallikarjun Kharge in 2022, merely re-shared the X thread, this comes at a time when his actions have often shown disagreement with the party or its stances.
He has missed three recent meetings of the party, the most recent one in the middle of the winter session of Parliament that is scheduled to end on December 19.
Tharoor had cited health reasons for not attending one of these meetings, but questions arose when he was at an event where PM Modi delivered a lecture the very next day. Tharoor made social media posts praising the PM on his Instagram account.
More recently, he was the lone Congress representative invited to attend the state banquet hosted by President Droupadi Murmu for visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera had taken a jibe over it: “Everyone's conscience has a voice. When my leaders aren't invited, but I am, we should understand why the game is being played, who is playing the game, and why we shouldn't be part of it.”
BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla called Tharoor “khatron ke khiladi” (playing with danger) for "directly calling out… nepo kid" Rahul Gandhi in his article on dynastic politics.
The disagreements with the party started showing after Tharoor's participation in the Modi government's global outreach after Operation Sindoor against Pakistan. The party had said it was not consulted on whom it wanted to nominate for the all-party teams. Tharoor had gone ahead and praised the PM for the military operation and more.
