Daijiworld Media Network – New Delhi
New Delhi, Nov 3: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has strongly criticised the deportation of London-based Hindi scholar Francesca Orsini, urging the government to show “a thicker skin, a broader mind, and a bigger heart” while dealing with foreign academics.
Tharoor said that such actions cause greater harm to India’s global image than any critical academic commentary. “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,” Tharoor wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
His remarks came in response to a post by former BJP MP Swapan Dasgupta, who shared his newspaper column titled “Orsini Furore Shows Perils of Visa Vigilantes.” Dasgupta stated that while the government has every right to enforce visa rules, “it has no business to assess the scholarship of a professor.”
Francesca Orsini, a distinguished Hindi scholar and professor emerita at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, was deported from Delhi airport last month after arriving from Hong Kong. According to government sources, she had been placed on a blacklist in March 2025 for allegedly violating visa conditions.
The Congress party earlier condemned the move, describing it as “a symptom of the Modi government’s hostility towards independent and professional scholarship.”
Noted historian Ramachandra Guha also slammed the deportation, calling it “the mark of a government that is insecure, paranoid, and even stupid.” He praised Orsini as a “distinguished academic whose work has richly illuminated our understanding of India’s cultural heritage.”
The incident has sparked a wider debate in academic and political circles about India’s treatment of foreign scholars and its implications for the country’s global reputation as an open and intellectual society.