Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari sought to distance the Congress and the Maharashtra government from the decision of the Mumbai University.
“We can never be on the same side as the Shiv Sena. Our ideas of India do not match,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari in New Delhi on Tuesday as he indulged in verbal calisthenics to defend chief minister Ashok Chavan’s statements supporting the unceremonious retraction of Rohinton Mistry’s book from the Mumbai University's syllabus.
“We are all for the freedom of expression under Article 19 of the Constitution, and we want that enough circumspection should be exercised while circumscribing this freedom, and this should be done only when it vitiates public order. But we also believe that there should be no moral policing of creative or literary freedom,” he said.
Responding to a volley of questions, Tewari sought to distance the Congress and the Maharashtra government from the decision of the Mumbai University. “The Mumbai University is an autonomous institution. Even if it’s granted that as a state university it receives funds from the state government, then without going into the question of having differences with our allies, the department is with the Nationalist Congress Party,” he added.
“If somebody has any grievance against the university, then the remedy lies with the other bodies within the university system. There is an established process for introducing a book in a course, or for removing it. If the process was not followed while introducing this book, then it has not been followed even while deleting it,” he added.
Tewari, however, stood by chief minister Ashok Chavan. “There is nothing wrong if he has said that he has personal objections to the language used in the said book. A chief minister is well within his rights to voice such an opinion.”
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