Caught on the wrong foot over a Twitter post on Jawaharlal Nehru three days ago, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday attempted to set the record straight by sharing footage showing the grand welcome accorded to India’s first prime minister during his US visits. It may have just been a “kerfuffle”, as the wordsmith politician put it, but one that clearly needed some recall from history. Hoping to silence trolls, Tharoor shared YouTube video links of footage showing Nehru meeting various US presidents. One link showed him being received at the airport in 1949 by then president Harry S Truman.
Another link showed then vice president Richard Nixon welcoming him and his daughter Indira Gandhi at the airport in 1956. The footage goes on to show Nehru being warmly received at the White House by then president Dwight D Eisenhower. In a third video clip from 1961, Nehru is seen meeting John F Kennedy, addressing Indian diaspora in Washington and meeting journalists. It all started on Monday night when Tharoor set out to out to take a swipe at the ‘Howdy Modi’ event, but found himself in trouble instead when he posted a picture of Nehru and Indira Gandhi in what he claimed was the US only to clarify later that it was probably from their visit to the USSR.
Tharoor, who tweeted the photograph of the first prime minister and his daughter in an open vehicle waving to large crowds of people, was also trolled for misspelling Indira Gandhi’s name as “India Gandhi”.On Tuesday night, Tharoor, looking to settle the “kerfuffle” over the issue, posted an authenticated pair of pictures from Nehru’s visit to the US in 1949 in which a large number of people can be seen gathered at the University of Wisconsin to hear the visiting dignitary give a speech. “After the Twitter kerfuffle about a mislabelled photograph, here’s an authenticated pair of pix from our PM’s visit to the US in 1949: a large crowd of people gathers at the University of Wisconsin to listen to a speech by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in November 1949,” Tharoor said.
