PC: Nothing wrong with Amarinder’s anti-blasphemy law

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 8

In the first official endorsement of the Punjab Government's controversial anti-blasphemy law passed last year, party veteran P Chidambaram and head of the Congress Lok Sabha Manifesto Committee said today that there was nothing wrong with the law.

Chidambaram's remarks mark a change in position from September 2018 when responding to queries around the limiting nature of Punjab's anti-desecration law, Chidambaram had said personally, as a liberal, he was not in agreement with it.

But today as elections are nearing, Chidambaram not only backed the law, he defended it against suggestions that it undermined the freedoms the Constitution guarantees to the people.

"Do not define sacrilege in terms of your extreme high liberalism. There is nothing wrong with Amarinder Singh's anti-blasphemy law. It protects all the holy books from desecration," Chidambaram said answering a related query during a panel discussion that followed the release of his book "Undaunted: Saving the Idea of India", here.

This is the first time a senior Congress functionary, who's also steering the direction of the party manifesto, endorsed the Amarinder Singh government's move to bring the anti-sacrilege bill that triggered widespread criticism from liberals.