‘Dissent does not disappear simply because it is beaten out of public sight’: Shashi Tharoor on students’ protest

Students' protest: The message that the ruling government is currently sending is that the debate that’s taking place on the streets is unwelcome in the carpeted floors of the parliament, said Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor.

Tharoor, in an opinion piece for The Indian Express, said what Sonam Wangchuk and the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) did was “classically Gandhian”. The government could just have sent some nimbu-pani with a minister to assure them of a discussion in the Parliament. But it chose the path of coercion, he said.

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He asked, “If Parliament is not the forum for the nation’s elected representatives to ventilate public grievances, interrogate executive overreach, and seek solutions to pressing social crises, then what purpose does it serve?” Tharoor’s piece comes as Congress and the opposition parties demand a discussion on the NEET paper leaks and the students’ protest in the aftermath. The government has, however, said that it is ready to discuss any of these topics. 

“When a government closes the door to parliamentary debate and deploys police lathis on public streets, it creates a dangerous vacuum.  Dissent does not disappear simply because it is beaten out of public sight; it merely turns inward, festering into cynicism and alienation among the young, like the female students at Jantar Mantar who told me in shocked disbelief of being manhandled by policemen and witnessing demonstrators being assaulted with savage brutality by men in plain clothes wielding lathis studded with nails,” he wrote. 

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Tharoor said democracy is not sustained by the enforcement of silence but through open debate.The right to peaceful assembly is “not a privilege conceded by the state at its convenience; it is a foundational right forged in our freedom struggle”, he said.

The MP said to treat peaceful demonstrators as security threats is to forget that the very architects of our republic were themselves protesters. He called for an independent judicial inquiry into the “excessive use of force, pellet injuries, and lathi-charges against non-violent protesters”. 

He said the government must engage in a dialogue with the student representatives rather than relying on police containment. Tharoor said Parliament is where this discussion should take place as it is the “deliberative sanctuary of the republic”. “It is time to prove to the youth of India that their voices need not be battered and bruised on the streets to be heard in the corridors of power,” he said.

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