Cows on Twitter

Shashi Tharoor is a hotshot Indian policitian with prospects, currently Minister of State for External Affairs and MP from a district in Kerala. He nearly won the campaign for UN Secretary General after seven years as UN Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information under Kofi Anaan. He has a reputation as a human rights advocate.

A sophisticated guy, unlikely to be caught in a Twitter scandal about religious and political sensitivity.

Maybe sophisticated is the problem.

Asked by a journalist if he would be traveling "cattle class" to his home district in Kerala as part of recent austerity measures for government officials conspiculously adopted even by Sonia Gandhi, he twittered this:

"Absolutely, in cattle class in solidarity with all our holy cows."

The joke (his defense) was received as careless disdain for travelers without tax-supported perks of their own, a lack of appreciation for the conditions in which ordinary Indians do travel, an insult to cows which are holy in India, and dismissiveness of government efforts to cut back. This from somebody who had to be told to vacate a five star hotel where he and a colleague had lived high on the hog for more than three months.

The ensuing Congress scandal, cheerfully fanned by media, who acted amused, was serious enough to send him, hat in hand, to Sonia Gandhi, the President of the Congress party, to make an apology so he could keep his job.

The verdict: insensitivity by haves and the opportunity to score on a rival. A volatile mixture of media and identity politics, the familiar democratic brew. What's interesting is WHAT sets off different cultural groups and what symbols come to stand for conflicts that are always there, waiting.