Congress Crossed a Line: Death Threats Against Modi Are Unacceptable
Manju Lata Meena, President of the Jaipur Women’s Congress, stood at a public rally in the national capital and raised a slogan invoking the death and burial of the Prime Minister of India. This was not crowd noise, not an overheated chant lost in chaos, and not a mischievous turn of phrase. She acknowledged it publicly. On camera. Without remorse. That single act dragged political protest into the gutter and exposed how far sections of the opposition are willing to sink when anger replaces principle.
Let us be clear at the outset. This is not a defence of Narendra Modi or the BJP. Democracies survive on criticism, opposition, and even harsh political language. But no democracy survives when death threats are normalised as dissent. The moment death enters political vocabulary, the argument ends and intimidation begins.
Criticism Is Legitimate. Death Threats Are Not
You can oppose Modi’s policies. You can demand his resignation. You can call his government incompetent, authoritarian, or disastrous. All of that is protected speech. What is not protected is invoking death. Talking about graves. Suggesting elimination. That is not metaphor. That is not symbolism. That is intimidation, plain and simple. When political actors blur this line, they are not challenging power. They are poisoning the democratic space itself.
Name the Act, Not the Excuse
There has been no shortage of excuses since the video went viral. People were angry. Emotions were high. It was just a slogan. This is nonsense. Anger does not suspend the Constitution. Emotion does not cancel criminal law. If a private citizen had shouted the same words about any individual in a public place, police action would have been swift. FIR. Interrogation. Legal consequences. The only reason this is being debated instead of prosecuted is because the speaker wears a party badge.
The Laws She Broke and Why a Common Man Would Be Behind Bars
Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, this behaviour is not a grey area. Criminal intimidation applies when a person threatens injury to life. A slogan invoking death meets that threshold. Intentional insult likely to provoke breach of peace applies when speech is made knowing it can incite disorder. A death slogan shouted at a charged rally does exactly that. Statements conducing to public mischief apply when words create fear, alarm, or instability in society. Threatening language against the head of government does precisely this.
If an ordinary citizen had done this outside a police station, on a street corner, or online, he would already be facing legal consequences. No television debates. No moral relativism. No protective silence. The law is suddenly timid only when political cadres are involved.
Congress Crossed the Line Twice
The slogan itself was disgraceful. What followed was worse. Congress did not suspend Manju Lata Meena. It did not issue an unambiguous condemnation. It did not apologise to the country. Instead, it chose silence and evasiveness. This is not neutrality. This is complicity. Political parties are responsible not just for what their leaders say, but for what they tolerate. By looking away, Congress sent a message that anything goes as long as the target is Modi.
This Is Not Free Speech. This Is Political Degeneracy
Invoking free speech to defend death threats is intellectual dishonesty. No constitution protects threats to life. No democracy treats intimidation as opinion. Hiding behind Article 19 to excuse violent language does not strengthen free speech. It corrodes it. It hands the state future excuses to clamp down on genuine dissent by first normalising abuse in its most extreme form.
The Rot This Normalises
When death becomes a slogan, politics stops being debate and becomes mob intimidation. Today it is the Prime Minister. Tomorrow it will be judges, journalists, election officials, or rival politicians. This is how democracies decay. Not through a single authoritarian act, but through the steady erosion of limits while everyone pretends it is normal.
Selective Leniency Is the Real Scandal
The most damning part of this episode is not just what was said, but how institutions responded. The system has become ruthless with ordinary citizens and cowardly with political actors. This selective leniency is not balance. It is betrayal of the rule of law. Laws that apply only to the powerless are not laws at all.
Opposing Modi is legitimate. Necessary, even. Threatening death is not politics. It is thuggery disguised as protest. Congress crossed a line, and every institution that looks away is complicit in dragging Indian politics further into the gutter. Democracies do not collapse overnight. They rot when lines are erased and cowards pretend not to see it.
