Shashi Tharoor's recent remarks praising Modi's leadership and coming down heavily on the Emergency have rubbed the Congress top brass the wrong way. He is fully entitled to his views and air them too. But the Congress will have none of it. Some senior Congress leaders have even stated that Shashi is free to chart his own path, a euphemism for "free to leave the party, if he so wishes".

Tharoor is no ordinary politician, as politicians across party lines know too well. In fact, he is a scholar cum academic cum author cum diplomat cum politician, all rolled into one, not to forget his fine sense of humour and his powerful vocabulary owing to which he is fondly called Shashi Thesaurus.

This being the case, his party ought to have shown more tolerance towards his statements instead of branding them rebellious. However, one must add that this is the true face of politics in India. If you are in a political party, you are either its patron saint or its sinner. Truth be told, even PM Modi has made several remarks that do not stand the test of truth or factuality.

To quote just one of his egregious mistakes ---It was only after the movie Gandhi was made, is when people started getting curious about the personality.” So far, there has been no open challenge to such absurdities, half-truths, false promises and blatant lies, even from the media. It follows that nobody from the party (BJP) will ever gather the guts to challenge, or at least suggest to the Supreme Leader that he must do his homework sincerely and not take the audience for granted. That the rot runs across party lines is of little or no consolation for our democracy, a democracy in which free speech, which is the sine qua non of true democracy, is gasping for breath.

Avinash Godboley, Dewas, MP