Congress MP Shashi Tharoor appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, declaring himself “deeply disturbed” by the FIR against the 49 authors of an open letter to the PM in July. Mr Tharoor urged the Prime Minister to “affirm the constitutional principle of Article 19” and guarantee freedom of speech and expression. In a two-page letter, he also reminded PM Modi of a speech before the US Congress in 2016, in which the Prime Minister called the Constitution a “holy book” and said “… freedom of faith, speech… and equality of all citizens, regardless of background, are enshrined as fundamental rights”.
“As citizens of India we hope that every one of us can fearlessly bring to your notice issues of national importance, so that you can take the lead to address them. We would like to believe that you too would support the right to freedom of expression, so ‘mann ki baat‘… does not become ‘maun ki baat‘,” Shashi Tharoor wrote.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Urging all those who believe in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreedomOfExpression?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FreedomOfExpression</a> to send this or similar letters to <a href="https://twitter.com/PMOIndia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PMOIndia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@narendramodi</a> urging him to affirm the constitutional principle of our Article 19 rights & the value of democratic dissent — even if more FIRs follow as a result! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaveFreeSpeech?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SaveFreeSpeech</a> <a href="https://t.co/MDIrros64j">pic.twitter.com/MDIrros64j</a></p>— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) <a href="https://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/1181393057628844032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 8, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Shashi Tharoor said the public only wanted to see the Prime Minister show some concern and warned the centre against dismissing challenges to it.
“There has been mounting concern about the freedom of expression and now it has reached a point where the people feel the PM should answer,” Mr Tharoor said.
“No one is accusing the PM of having filed this case. Let him say that he doesn’t want such suits to be filed. If challenges to the government are deemed anti-national then god help our democracy,” he added.
Earlier this year 49 intellectuals, artists and celebrities, including Ramachandra Guha, Aparna Sen and Mani Ratnam, wrote to Prime Minister Modi to express concern over growing incidents of mob killing and the alleged weaponisation of the “Jai Shri Ram” slogan that made headlines in Bengal during national elections this year.
The letter stressed there was no “democracy without dissent”, a point Mr Tharoor mentioned in his letter to the PM.