Flinging the shoe: Fad or phenomenon?

While throwing the shoe at Jindal,Kumar said he was doing so in protest against Congress policies. Shoe-hurling came under world spotlight when Iraqi journalist al Zaidi flung his pair at former US President George W. Bush at a press meet in Baghdad last year. Bush had managed to duck the boots.

A Sikh scribe,Jarnail Singh,lobbed his shoe at Home Minister P Chidambaram under media glare here on Tuesday in protest against the minister’s response to a question on Congress leader Jagdish Tytler being given a clean chit by the CBI in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

It’s a different matter altogether that the shoe had missed him but hit his Congress party colleagues,Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar,who were forced to drop out of the electoral fray in the face of mounting anger among Sikhs over their candidature.

A lesser-known but similar incident had taken place two days after the Sikh journalist incident — a Delhi college lecturer also attempted to target a colleague with his shoe at a staff council meeting but it was thwarted by other teachers.

Shoes have also been hurled at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao,Iranian president Ahamadinejad and Supreme Court judge Arijit Pasayat.