Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is a strong critic of the Modi-led government, on Sunday said the prime minister deserves respect when he visits foreign countries as India’s representative, but when he is in the country, people have the right to question him.
He was speaking at a session organised by the All India Professional Congress in Pune district of Maharashtra.
Tharoor said, “The prime minister deserves respect in foreign countries as (there) he is a representative of our nation. When he is in India, we have the right to ask him questions,”
Tharoor’s remarks come after Modi and US president Donald Trump addressed at least 50,000 Indian-Americans at an event titled Howdy,Modi in Houston.
On the row over a common language for India, the Lok Sabha MP from Kerala said he was in favour of a three-language formula. The formula promotes multilingual communicative abilities.
“The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ideology of promoting Hindi, Hinduism and Hindustan is dangerous for our country. We need to carry on the three-language formula,” added Tharoor.
Amid a heated debate over his remark that Hindi should be a common language, union home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday had clarified that he has never asked for imposition of Hindi over native languages in the country but advocated its use as the second language.
{{/usCountry}}Amid a heated debate over his remark that Hindi should be a common language, union home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday had clarified that he has never asked for imposition of Hindi over native languages in the country but advocated its use as the second language.
{{/usCountry}}Tharoor also criticised the ruling BJP over incidents of mob lynching, saying they are an “insult to Hinduism and Lord Ram”.