NEW DELHI: Referring to
Shashi Tharoor as “param gyani”, Union minister of state Mahesh Giri today ‘schooled’ the Congress leader on the difference between the terms artifacts and antiquities.
The verbal duel between the two leaders started after Tharoor, in a tweet, accused the government of misleading the country on the issue of the number of artifacts/antiquities brought back to India.
"Is a minister misleading Parliament, or is the PM misleading the nation?" wrote Tharoor as he tweeted two "contradictory" statements by Sharma and PM
Narendra Modi.
Sharma immediately corrected Tharoor and imparted a lesson on the difference in the meaning of "artifacts" and "antiquities".
"Param Gyani Shri Shashi Tharoor Ji, Kindly update your knowledge regarding antiquities and artifacts. All antiquities are necessarily in existence not less than 100 years. The life of what constitutes an artifact is not defined in the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972," he tweeted in response to Tharoor's tweet.
Sharma further explained that "all artifacts may not be antiquities but all antiquities are artifacts."
The minister added that since Independence India has retrieved 40 antiquities out of which 27 antiquities were retrieved in last 4 years. There are approximately eight to ten antiquities currently in the pipeline for retrieval, he said.
