On Thursday, the usually impeccable Shashi Tharoor made an egregious error on Twitter. To wish his followers Mahavir Jayanti, the Congress MP unknowingly posted a photograph of the Buddha. Mahavir Jayanti, a major Jain festival, marks the birth of Mahavir, the last Tirthankar or spiritual guide of Jainism.
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
Twitter users were quick to spot the error and jumped on the chance to correct the man who usually sends people scrambling for dictionaries with his dense tweets.
Why today everyone is wishing Mahavir Jayanti with Buddha image (Tharoor syndrome?)
— Raj T (@dr_tewari) March 29, 2018
Buddha is shown in Mudra sign.. Mahavir is depicted in vedic Ardha padmasan pose (both hand in lap)
Sorry to see we are so ignorant about our own culture.
@ShashiTharoor you happen to post picture of Gautam Buddha. There is as much as difference in Buddha & Mahavir as in day & night. Hope you get the right photo sometime soon.
— Animesh Jain🇮🇳 (@Animesh_India) March 29, 2018
Several others saw the humorous side of things and what ensued was a long thread of tweets accompanied by mismatched photos, with often hilarious results.
Happy Holi!! pic.twitter.com/gu1TF4u2Sn
— Rosy (@rose_k01) March 29, 2018
Happy Birthday Farah Khan pic.twitter.com/8TLpp6p2CC
— 🙈🙉🙊 (@dimaagkoshot) March 29, 2018
Happy Birthday to Michael Jackson pic.twitter.com/nEIzCmVNHO
— Keh Ke Peheno (@coolfunnytshirt) March 29, 2018
— Raju Srivastava (@Gajodhar_007) March 29, 2018
Happy Birthday Shashi Tharoor. pic.twitter.com/jJyzTJICvi
— LolmLol (@LOLiyapa) March 29, 2018
Tharoor was not the only one, Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav also made the mistake. Twitter users also pointed to a poster in Karnataka, ostensibly put up by the state government, that confused Buddha for Mahavir.
Even the sidramaiah govt in ktka also using photo of Buddha to wish on Mahavir Jayanti pic.twitter.com/HYYOTAhbwy
— Hariprasad (@harihegde) March 29, 2018
आप सभी को भगवान महावीर जयंती की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं। अहिंसा, करुणा और शांति के पथ प्रदर्शक भगवान महावीर जी के उपदेश और उनके विचार सम्पूर्ण मानवता के लिए मार्गदर्शक हैं। pic.twitter.com/ah7J98naMh
— Dimple Yadav (@dimpleyadav) March 29, 2018
Tharoor also pointed to others who had made the mistake, including Zee News. The leader later said that the news channel had deleted their post.
Seems @ZeeNews has deleted their erroneous image. But i believe in owning up to my mistakes & not concealing the evidence of my errors. So my mistake (&the chortling that followed) is there for all to see. Honesty (as @stevesmith49 &co have found out) is always the best policy. https://t.co/8h1pfNYN8V
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
Since it seems our media has found nothing more newsworthy than my innocent mistake, do see how Mahavira is depicted by all these mainstream publications!https://t.co/bBQUYBADDK https://t.co/NOSKPdwKuQ https://t.co/a7zlMqimZyhttps://t.co/1nNUJq9H0mhttps://t.co/CkfJJOYqj6
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
The Thiruvananthapuram MP has had a rough 24 hours on Twitter, as he indicated in a post. On Wednesday, he had made two typos in his tweets – minor mistakes by all accounts, but ones that he felt compelled to correct.
कभी ख़ुशी कभी ग़म.... Ttypos yesterday, Mahavira today.... Will take a breakhttps://t.co/k9XqfE8o1y
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
जवाब ! I can make typos in Hindi too!
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
nation, not bation. Apologies for my thick typing fingers
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 29, 2018
The recent errors notwithstanding, Tharoor’s Twitter account frequently doubles up as a crash-course in English vocabulary. In recent months, he has expanded social media users’ dictionaries with words such as farrago and rodomontade. As this made him the stuff of jokes and memes, Tharoor joined in the fun by intermittently sharing a word of the day with his followers.
Word of the Day: From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 25, 2018
moledro:
a feeling of resonant connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet, who may have lived centuries ago & thousands of miles away but can still get inside your head & leave behind morsels of their experience