Shashi Tharoor backs Bhagwat's Gen-Z remarks, says protests are 'expression of democracy'

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has welcomed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat's remarks defending Gen Z's right to protest, saying the younger generation's demonstrations should be understood as an essential form of democratic expression rather than dismissed as anti-national activity.

Speaking a day after Bhagwat addressed the India International Model United Nations (IIMUN), Tharoor said one of the RSS chief's remarks had particularly struck him, that Gen Z protests were an expression of democracy and that there was nothing anti-national about protesting in a democracy.

"I was very struck by his statement that the Gen Z protests were in fact an expression of democracy, that they were entirely justifiable, that nothing anti-national about protesting in a democracy," Tharoor said during an interaction at the event.

He said protests provide citizens with an avenue to communicate with those in power, particularly when established institutions fail to adequately reflect public concerns.

"The main point is to be heard," Tharoor said, adding that protests were one way through which rulers received feedback from citizens.

The Congress MP recalled his own interventions when the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) protests first gained traction online. He said he had opposed the government's decision to shut down the group's X account after it rapidly accumulated millions of followers.

He argued at the time that democracies required avenues for public protest.

"All democracies require opportunities for people to protest because they serve as kind of the valves on a pressure cooker. You need to let out the steam," Tharoor said.

According to him, Parliament and mainstream media did not always provide adequate opportunities for people to express their grievances. Suppressing alternative avenues of expression, he said, could instead increase public frustration.

Tharoor said he later argued that the protesters should take their demands beyond social media and into the wider political space by engaging with opposition parties, mainstream media, courts and public demonstrations.

He also recalled visiting Jantar Mantar after the police action against protesters and speaking directly to young people there.

"My message to them very clearly was not really a message other than, you have a right to be heard, what was done to you should not have been done," he said.

Tharoor said the protests had become politically significant because they were not restricted to a narrow sectional constituency. He contrasted them with earlier movements that, in his assessment, could be portrayed as representing a particular community or interest group.

This time, he said, the protests had attracted "middle-class, urban, Hindi-speaking, largely Hindu India" and had spread across the northern states that traditionally form a strong electoral base for the ruling party.

"Something has shifted in this country," Tharoor said later in the discussion, arguing that political parties could no longer take young voters or public sentiment for granted.