Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has put himself in trouble for a Twitter message that he posted. In this social network site he said sarcastically replying to a query that he would travel “cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!”.

Jayanthi Natarajan, the Congress spokesperson, termed this phrase of Shashi Tharoor as “unacceptable” and he commented that Tharoor was perhaps not conscious of local sensitivities since he is new to the Indian politics.

Tharoor is on an official visit in Liberia now and he tweeted late night yesterday that he had, “learned belatedly of fuss over my tweet replying to journo’s query whether I would travel to Kerala in ‘cattle class’.”

He said that the “cattle class” phrase was just used in the query and that he just repeated.

Shashi Tharoor tweeted, “It’s a silly expression but means no disrespect to economy travellers, only to airlines for herding us in like cattle. Many have misunderstood.”

Tharoor also had admitted that if this “Cattle class” phrase when is translated into Malayalam then it sounds worse. He said, “To those hurt by the belief that my repeating the phrase showed contempt: sorry.”

He went on explaining further that by the word “holy cows” he never referred to any individuals. He said, “Holy cows are NOT individuals but sacrosanct issues or principles that no one dares challenge. Wish critics would look it up.”