Veer Savarkar: Shashi Tharoor Faces Saffron Summer Heat

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A surprise ‘Veer Savarkar Award’ has dragged Tharoor into the BJP–Congress ideological battlefield, forcing him to defend his secular turf in Kerala while rejecting an honour he never agreed to receive.

By TRH Political Desk

New Delhi, December 10, 2025 — Congress MP Shashi Tharoor seems stuck in saffron crosshair. Teasingly, he has been conferred with a Veer Savarkar award. But the Congress MP doesn’t know who is awarding him.

Veer Savarkar has emerged as a saffron icon. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants a place for Savarkar in the league of India’s leading lights of the freedom struggle era.

But Savarkar remains a red flag for the Congress. The saffron icon also arguably knows no fanbase in Tharoor’s Kerala. In Thiruvananthapuram, the Lok Sabha constituency of Tharoor, the Left and the Congress nurse secular vote base. That slots Tharoor in crosshairs—preserving vote base and walk fine balance to humour the BJP and still not break ties with the Congress.

“I have come to know from media reports that I have been named a recipient of the ‘Veer Savarkar Award,’ which is to be presented today in Delhi. I only learned about this announcement yesterday in Kerala, where I had gone to vote in the local self-government elections,” Tharoor said in a statement posted on X.

He stated that “I had clarified that I was neither aware of, nor had accepted, such an award and it was irresponsible on the part of the organisers to announce my name without my having agreed to receive it.”