Amid a growing uproar over Assam minister Ashok Singhal’s “Bihar approves Gobi farming” post, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has weighed in after being tagged by a user on X.

The minister faced heavy backlash online after users recognised the photo he shared as one linked to the 1989 Logain massacre, where more than 110 Muslims were killed during the Bhagalpur riots, and cauliflower saplings were planted over the burial site.

A user, @isaifpatel, responded to Singhal’s post saying it “glorifies the massacre of 116 Muslims to celebrate an election victory” and urged Tharoor to rally influential Hindu voices to condemn what he called “normalisation of one of the worst pogroms perpetuated against Bihari Muslims.”

Tharoor replied that he is “not a community organiser,” and joint statements are not his role.

However, he added, “as a passionate advocate of #InclusiveIndia and a proud Hindu,” he could speak for himself — and for “most Hindus” he knows — to state that “neither our faith nor our nationalism requires, justifies or condones such massacres, let alone applauds them.”

When another user pressed him, saying he still hadn’t explicitly condemned the “gobi farming” post, Tharoor responded sharply: “That’s exactly what I did! I condemned it.”

The photo at the centre of the controversy is widely recognised as representing the “cauliflower burial” site of the Logain massacre — a chilling symbol of the 1989 violence in Bhagalpur.