Official India needs to grow thicker skin: Tharoor on deportation of UK professor

New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Days after London-based scholar Francesca Orsini was deported from the Delhi airport over alleged violation of visa conditions, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said official India needs to grow a thicker skin, a broader mind and a bigger heart.

The Thiruvananthapuram MP said rolling out an "unwelcome mat" at airport immigration counters to deport foreign scholars and academics because of trivial visa violations is doing the country far more damage than any number of negative articles in foreign academic journals could ever do.

Tharoor's remarks came in response to a post by former BJP MP Swapan Dasgupta in which he shared his article in a newspaper, arguing that while it is the duty of the state to ensure compliance with visa conditions, it has no business to assess the scholarship of a professor.

In his article titled "Orsini furore shows perils of visa vigilantes", Dasgupta said now that the furore over the denial of entry to Orsini, a reputed Hindi scholar based in the UK, has settled down, it is worthwhile to explore some issues the controversy has thrown up.

Tagging Dasgupta's post, Tharoor said, "For once, I agree with @Swapan55! Rolling out an 'unwelcome mat' at our airport immigration counters to deport foreign scholars and academics because of trivial visa violations is doing us far more damage -- as a country, a culture and an internationally-credible nation -- than any number of negative articles in foreign academic journals could ever accomplish." "Official India needs to grow a thicker skin, a broader mind & a bigger heart," he said.

Last month, the Congress said the decision to bar Orsini from the country was not a matter of immigration formality but a "symptom of the Modi government's hostility towards independent, serious-thinking, professional scholarship".

Orsini, a scholar of Hindi and professor emerita at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), was deported last month, soon after she arrived from Hong Kong, a source in the Ministry of Home Affairs said.

Orsini has been on a 'Black List' since March 2025 for violation of visa conditions, the source said.

Reacting to Orsini's deportation on X, historian Ramachandra Guha said, "To deport her without reason is the mark of a government that is insecure, paranoid, and even stupid." He described Orsini as a great scholar of Indian literature "whose work has richly illuminated our understanding of our own cultural heritage". PTI ASK DIV DIV