He said Bangladesh faced a particular situation under specific circumstances, while protests in France reflected broader discontent over inflation, the cost of living and unemployment, issues that also affect parts of India.
Tharoor said the Congress would not condone violence, including the burning of buses and police stations reported in France. Instead, he said, peaceful protest was a constitutional right in a democracy.
“The logic of peaceful protest is that in a democracy like ours under the constitution, citizens of India have the right to express their discontent publicly and peacefully,” he said.
#WATCH | Thiruvananthapuram, Keralam | n Union Minister Kiren Rijiju's statement, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, "I think that India is not Bangladesh and India is not France. I don't see these analogies as particularly relevant... We would never condone any of the violence, setting alight buses and police stations and so on, that has occurred in France. We only believe in peaceful protest... that's the kind of protest that I have participated in, and that I believe the opposition in general supports... As far as the larger issues are concerned, there's no point distorting a phrase like 'regime change' and so on... What we are calling for is free and fair elections... What is troubling today is that large numbers of people have been cut from the electoral rolls as the result of a completely troublesome, irregular, and partially illegal process. This is why we are calling for all this to be undone... It's a constitutional issue. It's not an issue of trying to topple a regime or anything like that..." He adds, "...Democracy is not a gift of anybody... we, the ordinary citizens of India, are the custodians of it... Every Indian citizen has the right to protect our democracy... All I'm saying is we are asking institutions like the Election Commission to behave themselves, to perform as they are required to by the democratic Constitution of India. That's all it is. I'm not in any way challenging these institutions as institutions. I'm challenging the way they are behaving, the way they are conducting themselves, and that is something that honestly all of us in India should be concerned about..."
— ANI (@ANI) October 19, 2026
Rejecting allegations that the opposition was seeking to topple the government, Tharoor said its demand was for free and fair elections and the restoration of citizens' voting rights. He raised concerns over large numbers of people being removed from electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, describing the process as troublesome, irregular and partially illegal.
He said the issue was constitutional and that every citizen should be able to exercise their right to vote and determine their political future.
“Democracy is not a gift of anybody, it is not a gift of the government, it is not a gift of the election commission,” Tharoor said, adding that the Constitution and India's freedom struggle had secured that right.
Congress Rajya Sabha MP Pawan Khera also questioned comparisons between India and Europe, accusing those drawing parallels of portraying Muslims as inherently violent and reducing European protests to a “Muslim problem”. He alleged that peaceful protests in India had faced force from the state and right-wing groups.
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju, meanwhile, alleged that a conspiracy similar to those behind violence in Bangladesh and France had been planned in India, involving anti-India groups and some politicians seeking to incite unrest. He said political change in India must happen through elections.
The debate comes amid a Fox News Digital investigation published on October 9 that identified 50 organisations allegedly linked to France's student protest movement and its wider network, including groups in India and other countries.