Showing posts with label Sunanda Pushkar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunanda Pushkar. Show all posts

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sunanda Pushkar and the Indian Political Elite: Tweets of a Death Foretold

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of the Union Minister for Education, Dr Sashi Tharoor, was found dead in a holel room in New Delhi on January 17th 2014. The events preceding her death are extremely important. Apparently she discovered an Affair between Tharoor and a Pakistani woman, Mehr Tarar. Tharoor had saved the name of this woman on his mobile under the gender bending name of Harish. On the flight from Trivandrum to New Delhi this couple had a public spat after which she took her husband's mobile and made public the emails between the woman in Pakistan and Tharoor. Inn her last and final tweet she made a threat which her death a few hours later can be interpreted in different ways: I have taken the blame for this man's IPL crimes  and I am not willing to take anything "lying down"/ In the same tweet she discloses that Mehr Tarar was an ISI agent.

The reference to the IPL could trigger the memory of the scandal in 2010 when the Kochi Tusker IPL franchise was allotted to Sunanda Pushkar as "sweat equity". This scandal came to light because Lalit Modi, the IPL honcho tweeted about it and Tharoor was forced to quit his post as the MoS for External Affairs. Soon thereafter the two married and Sunanda Pushkar shifted to Delhi from Dubai. This woman has been quite unfortunate in the men she chose to have in her life. She divorced her first husband within week of her marriage and married his friend Sajith Menon who was the father of her 21 year old son, Shiv Menon. She then married Sahshi Tharoor who is close to the record of Henry VIII as far as matrimonial statistics is concerned. The relationship fell apart under the twin strains of Tharoor's serial infidelity and the stressses and strains of being a Miniter in a fractious UPA regime. In fact on the day she dies, her husband was attedning the special AICC Session in which Rahul Gandhi was all but nominated for the post of PM in the unlikely event of the dynastic fascists coming to power.

The Police investigation was certainly full of unexpected surprises. Though the Family of Tahroor and Sunanda were both interested in floating the theory that the lady died due to a fatal mixture of "wrong medication, stress and exhaustion". the autopsy revealed that her death was caused by poisoning.  And the examination of the viscera has also more or less confirmed that she died due to induced poisoning. And to make matters worse, the autopsy revealed injury marks all over the body of Sunanda, evidence of either domestic violence or a scuffle with her killers.  The Indian Media jhas been very lukewarm in the way this crime was handled. Taroor enjoys a good rapport with the English speaking media because he is said to be a noted writer, scholar and an internationally acclaimed diplomat. While the petty affair of the woman who was being protected on the request of her father by the Gujarat Police resulted in the Congress regime trying to embarrass the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Gujarat by ordering a Judicial Inquiry, there is no attempt to find the truth of the death of Sunanda. It is entirely another matter that the Government of India could not find even a single judge to head the Inquiry it ordered.

There are a number of unanswered questions:
1, What do the injury marks on her body indicate?
2  Is there any truth in the allegation made by Sunanda that Mehr Tarar is an ISI agent
3. Why was the woman who was obviously ill left alone and unsupervised in a hotel room>
4  Why is the family keen to stop the Investigation and close the case as an "accidental death".

The people of Trivandrum voted for Tharoor and he has brought only scandal and shame upon them. Hopefully next time around they will atone for their mistake.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Tharoor, Tweets and Twats: A Long Day's Journey into Night

I remember Sashi Tharoor as a student in Delhi University sitting in the CH (Coffee House for the uninitiated) with Swapan Das Gupta and Chandan Mitra and a bevy of girls from Miranda House. I still remember Tharoor with long side burns a kurta and faded blue jeans with an air of total nonchalance about him. I went on to earn a Ph D in History from a good State University in the US and Sashi Tahroor went to Fletcher School of Diplomacy to earn his. The Ph D dissertation was published by Vikas under the title Reasons of State and till this day remains the only full length study of the process of Indian foreign policy decision making. I hold no brief for Congressmen and their brand of dynastic fascism and yet I will say that I find it impossible to believe that Sashi Tharoor has used his position to make money. We have the like of Laloo Prasad Yadava and Papu Yadava, crimianls to the core,being included in the India political spectrum and Tharoor certainly is not cut from the same cloth.
Tharoor broke a few rules of the political game. First, unlike N D Tiwari, Tharoor flaunted his penchant for pretty women. When that Bharka woman from NDTV was inteviewing Tharoor on NDTV a few days back, I thought that Dutt would just sidle up to Tahroor. Such is the force he exudes. We have chief minister of one southern state with more wives than he even cares to remember and his children from different women are fighting for his political legacy even as the old man like King Lear is still technically alive and kicking. No one says anything. The First Prime Minister, Jawarhar Lal Nehru accepted the Partition of India as suggested by Mountbatten because Lady Mountbatten was his lover and we keep that singular fact under the carpet. Tahroor openly associated with a PRETTY WOMAN AND THAT was his first major mistake. He took her to official parties and made it clear to all that she was his love interest. Indians being a hypocritical people do not appreciate an honest relationship. Had Taroor kept Sunanda Pushkar (the pun is unintended) no one would have objected. But he was honest and that was his undoing.
SaSHI Tharoor is a serial offender as far as women are concerned and that is a personality disorder not a crime. The Tiger Woods syndrome affects even successful writers. Tharoor is the author of an outstanding novel, The Great Indian Novel and is still regarded as an outstanding piece of post-colonial literature. His short stories collected in Five Dollar Smile and essays in Book less in Baghdad are well written.
The first rule of Indian politics is that keep your twats under wraps and do not flaunt them. Tharoor paid no heed to that. The second rule of Indian politics is bow and scrape and do not ask questions. Tharoor was tweeting away even on extremely sensitive issues. I have a blog in this site on his "cattle class" remark. I think that the Indian Media too does not know how to deal with a highly educated and accomplished man and was complicit in undermining Tharror.
The most important mistake that Tharoor made was to associate with low brow convicts like the IPL commissioner, Lalith Modi. This convicted drug dealer is not from the same class or status group of Tharoor and Sashi must not have been seen associating with such muck. And he will pay for that.

Sashi Tharoor fell for a woman who for all her looks and glamour did finally show some character. When the sweat equity of 70 crores became an issue she did surrender the equity hoping therby to pull her beau out of the crisis. Sunanda Pushkar husband Menon committed suicide in New Delhi two years back according to the latest Outlook and now see the mess Tharoor has landed in. The moral of the story: Keep your twats strictly out of public glare and scrutiny.