Rahul Gandhi disqualification: Shashi Tharoor asks ‘good friend’ Jaishankar to ‘cool it a bit’

EAM Jaishankar, during his two-day visit to Bengaluru over the weekend, attended BJP’s ‘Meet and Greet’ event, where he criticised the West over their reaction to Gandhi’s disqualification.

#WATCH | We need not be so thin-skinned, I think it’s very important that as govt we take something in stride. If we react to every comment, we are doing ourselves a disservice. I will strongly urge EAM Jaishankar to cool a little bit: Shashi Tharoor on EAM’s “West has a bad… pic.twitter.com/2DtYLWspMO

— ANI (@ANI) April 3, 2023

Addressing a gathering on Sunday,  Jaishankar, in response to a question posed by an attendee, said, “The West has a ‘bad habit’ for a long time of commenting on other people. They somehow think it’s some kind of God-given right. And I think they will have to learn only by experience that if you keep doing this, other people will also start commenting, and they [West] will not like it when that happens, and I can see it happen.”

Last week, when the US State Department’s Deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel was asked for his comments on Gandhi’s expulsion from the Parliament and whether that was consistent with democratic values, he replied that the US is watching his court case, adding that the country is engaging with India on the “shared commitment to democratic values – including, of course, freedom of expression.”

The German Foreign Ministry spokesperson, during a press briefing last week, had commented that it has taken note of the case and “expects that the standards of judicial independence and fundamental democratic principles will apply”.

Jaishankar further said, “We can have our arguments, but in our arguments, you actually invite the world to come and comment on you, then people are not tempted to comment. So we also need to not give those very generous invitations to the world saying ‘oh there are problems in India … America, Europe, why are you standing, why are you doing nothing,’ then obviously they are going to comment.”

He was referring to Gandhi’s lecture at the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, “Learning to Listen in the 21st Century”, where the Congress leader commented on the prevailing “threat to democracy” in India and alleged that several politicians, including him, were under surveillance. Further, at an interaction with Indian Journalists’ Association in London last month, Gandhi had said that the BJP wants India to be “silent” and had argued that there is “suppression of voice” across the country.

The Congress leader was disqualified from the Parliament on March 23, after a Surat court convicted him in a defamation case over his ‘Modi surname’ remark.