Shashi Tharoor’s woes won’t end; now it’s Ministry of External Affairs’ book purchase

New Delhi: Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, has termed a controversy over the Ministry of External Affairs’ buying books authored by him as “contemptible.”

Shashi Tharoor was reacting to media reports alleging that he “misused” his clout as the Minister of State for External Affairs to buy 150 copies each of his 3 books by his own Ministry for Indian missions overseas. Shashi Tharoor has been at the receiving end of concerted attacks against him for the “cattle class” controversy, where he was accused of insulting the common man – despite the media knowing full well the exact usage of meaning and usage of the phrase “cattle class.”

He remarked on Twitter that “truth is irrelevant for the bash ST (Shashi Tharoor) brigade.”

Shashi Tharoor said that he had told the journalist that his books had been bought by the Ministry of External Affairs years before he had anything to do with the government. It is contemptible that, despite this, they would imply that “I orchestrated a decision I was not even aware of,” the Minister added.

The Minister wrote on Twitter that “just for the record, my staff and I have nothing to do with the book purchases by the Ministry of External Affairs” and that he was “completely unaware” of his books being among the titles bought.

Media reports had maintained that while Shashi Tharoor might be “technically right” that he was not involved in the selection process regarding the books, “propriety” demanded that he should have advised the Ministry of External Affairs not to buy his own books.

Tharoor confirmed that the Ministry of External Affairs had bought 150 copies each of his 3 books – including India: From Midnight to the Millennium and The Great Indian Novel.

Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs said that it was a committee that had decided which titles to be kept in libraries of the Indian missions overseas. It was totally an independent decision, the sources added, and neither Minister Shashi Tharoor nor his office had nay role in this matter.

The committee, according to the Ministry of External Affairs sources, had met in July 2008 and decided on 108 titles. These titles included books written by former Prime Minister I K Gujral and former Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer. Three books of the out of the 108 titles are written by Shashi Tharoor.

Shashi Tharoor has been at the centre of many a controversy – the recent one being the reported remarks he had made, at a seminar, on Jawaharlal Nehru’s foreign policy. On this score, he had slammed the media for having “distorted” his comments.

Meanwhile, the followers of Shashi Tharoor in Twitter crossed the 600,000-mark on January 14, 2010. He had started with just 26 followers and 3 tweets in March 23, 2009, according to statistics on twitterholic.com