India's
Junior minister for external affairs at present, or Minister of State (MoS)
as it is called if official jargon, is an ex-army officer, who has
entered into active politics after retirement. General V.K.Singh
(Retd.) has a reputation of being a forthright officer, who is not
afraid to call spade a spade. In his otherwise successful army
career, he created two controversies, which were loved by the media.
Towards the end of his career there was a dispute regarding his date
of birth, causing him to become the first serving officer of the
Indian Army to take the government to court. In March 2012 he caused
a political row., when he said that over a year earlier he had
reported to the defence minister, that he had been offered a bribe
of US$2.7 million if the army bought several hundred sub-standard
vehicles.
When
new Government of India took over in 2014, he was made Junior
minister form external affairs and as per general trend, has been
keeping aloof and silent from the mainstream media. He suddenly found
himself in the limelight this week. One of India's neighbours,
celebrated their republic day on 23rd
March 2015. As is customary, the high commission of that nation
organised a private reception in New Delhi and invitation was sent to
Government of India.
The
Government ordered General Singh to attend this function, which he
did as a matter of duty. He went there, was welcomed by the high
commissioner and then sat with him for few minutes and left. From the
photographs released by the media, the minister did not appear to be
comfortable at the function at all.
There
is a famous phrase that is attributed to Queen Victoria of England by
courtier Caroline Holland in her book, Notebooks of a Spinster Lady,
1919, in which she has claimed the Queen remarking "We are not
amused." This phrase perhaps rightly describes what the general
felt after attending the reception, because afterward he published 5
tweets on twitter, one after another, in span of next 4 minutes.
In his
first three tweets sent at 10:01, 10:02 and 10:03 PM he defined the
meaning of word DUTY as “A task or action that a person is bound to
perform for moral or legal reasons,” followed by “The force that
binds one morally or legally to one's obligations,” and later as “
A job or service allocated.” This was followed by two more tweets
sent at 10:04 PM in which General defined the meaning of word
DISGUEST. In the first tweet he defines the word as “To sicken or
fill with loathing,” followed by “To offend the moral sense,
principles, or taste of .”
On the
face of it, General's tweets only give dictionary meanings of two
words in English language, yet they say a lot, about state of his
mind at that hour. The General, when approached by media later, gave
very matter of fact answers to them. When asked about a reporter
about his presence at the reception, he replied "The government
of India had to sent an MoS. They sent me and I went there and came
back." When another reporter asked him specifically whether
Prime Minister had asked him to attend the event, he said, "The
government of India asked me to go there."
That
was the end of it. However there was lot of speculation on twitter
about General's tweets. So he finally ended the matter putting the
ball is opponent's court by sending a tweet at 11:06 PM, which said,
“ Disgust'ed to see how certain sections of the media are twisting
this issue.”
25th
March 2015
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