Dear Shri Harish Salve Ji,

I usually do not watch television interviews, except when the interviewer is Karan Thapar, a habit I developed when he made his debut producing a weekly bulletin for the Hindustan Times, where I too worked. What prompted me to watch the interview you gave Arnab Goswami of Republic TV was a video clip from it that a friend sent me. I was shocked by some of your observations and decided to watch the full interview on YouTube. I was testing my own patience.

As I watched, I could not help remembering the interview I did with your father, NKP Salve, for Jain TV in the 1990s. Goswami, I presume, was then still "studying for some time in a Jesuit-run school," as he described his educational background.

Jain TV was among the first channels to make Indians realise that there could be an alternative to state-owned Doordarshan. I do not know how my interview with your father was received because I did not watch it. But the late Dr Jain, who owned the company, told me that it had a large audience in Karnataka.

The interview was part of a weekly programme exclusively for the Christian community, organised by a Jesuit priest. When the priest left for Rome on an ecclesiastical assignment, Dr Jain offered me the job, of course, without payment. I politely declined. He nevertheless came readily to a programme I organised on behalf of our Church. He arrived in a chauffeur-driven black Mercedes.

I mention this because Goswami seemed particularly keen to impress viewers by showing the size and luxury of the five-star hotel suite in which your interview took place. Whether a person sleeps in a palace, a government quarter or a five-star hotel, he ultimately requires no more than a space roughly seven feet by four feet to sleep.

I know four lawyers in Delhi and have observed their lives from reasonably close quarters. Two of them support 20 to 25 NGOs with contributions running into crores of rupees. Both earn mainly through international arbitration. One has instituted a chair in memory of his father, himself a distinguished lawyer, at a law university to promote the study of arbitration.

They live comfortably, but they do not let their surplus money remain locked in fixed deposits. They put it to work for the poor.

When floods devastated Kerala in 2018, one of them gave an organisation I headed ?35 lakh to revive two government schools. We completed the work in about a month and a half, spending only ?27 lakh. When I offered to return the balance, he refused and asked me to spend it. We used it to provide heavily subsidised winter uniforms to our students.

This brings me to your statement that you cannot understand the concept of "donation." Perhaps that is because you have not experienced the satisfaction of giving. I can assure you that giving can be more satisfying than receiving.

For 23 years, I headed an NGO founded in 1979 by seven members of a church in Delhi. Over the years, more than four lakh poor students have received quality education through its programmes. Initially, 90 per cent of our money came from abroad. Today, less than five per cent does. Nobody ever asked us to use those resources to convert anybody.

I can bet that not even one of those students became a Christian because of our work. I would be happy if they remain just good citizens.

You may never understand this because you do not appear to want to understand it. Goswami called you the most prominent Christian in India. You were "modest" enough to correct him by saying that you were not. Perhaps you meant that you are one of the most prominent Indians.

You said your Christian background did not prevent Narendra Modi from appointing you Solicitor General. A person's religion should never determine his suitability for public office. But please find out how many Muslims and Christians occupy ministerial and gubernatorial positions in the country. If the numbers are negligible, is it because there are no capable Muslims and Christians?

Your appointment cannot by itself prove that discrimination does not exist. When there was a case against me in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the lawyer who appeared for me was Justice Rajinder Sachar, a former Chief Justice. Another lawyer we consulted was the late Fali S. Nariman. Neither was a Christian.

I filed a case against DDA in the Delhi High Court. Within a few days, the judge gave us justice. Our advocate, Romy Chacko, argued pro bono for us.

Over the years, many doctors treated me. The doctor I admired most was the late Dr Narayana Pai, principal of Trivandrum Medical College. The doctor I remember with the greatest bitterness was a professor of surgery at Kottayam Medical College who kept my father waiting with a fractured leg for an operation for three days until we paid him a bribe of ?1,000. He happened to be a Syrian Christian, like me. Neither excellence nor corruption has a religion.

I was equally surprised by your comment about St Stephen's College asking your elder daughter to prove that she was a Christian. My son studied there, and now my grandson studies there. On both occasions, we were asked to produce a certificate from the priest of the Church to which they belonged. It was a routine administrative requirement.

Goswami seemed to want you to certify that everything was hunky-dory with the new FCRA Bill. I give you credit for mentioning that total FCRA collections in India were about ?23,000 crore and that Christians received only about 10 per cent, roughly ?2,300 crore. Who receives the other 90 per cent? Mostly Hindu organisations.

I know much more about FCRA from practical experience than from television discussions. The NGO I headed once sent me to the United States and paid my ticket. Some friends there gave me $100 each; one gave me $500. I gave receipts to all of them.

I was also invited to give a sermon at a church in Houston and was given a cheque for $100 in the name of the organisation I headed. When we deposited it in India, the cheque bounced back with the notation that a church could not give a gift to an Indian organisation.

FCRA was introduced by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. Narendra Modi calls the Emergency the darkest period in India's history, but he has retained and strengthened a law introduced during that period, originally to prevent foreign money from influencing political activity, including that of socialists such as George Fernandes.

Successive governments strengthened it. The Modi government has cancelled the FCRA registrations of thousands of NGOs, depriving thousands of their jobs. Organisations with names such as Christian, Fellowship and Church were among those that faced particular scrutiny. The rules have since been tightened considerably.

I have no objection to transparency or accountability. What I object to is the apparent double standard. Consider the PM CARES Fund. If the figures cited in public records are correct, it had a closing balance of ?8,452 crore in 2024-25, while its expenditure that year was only around ?87.85 lakh.

If an NGO is required to utilise its foreign contribution within prescribed limits and can lose its FCRA registration for failing to do so, should institutions holding thousands of crores not be subjected to comparable standards of accountability? A foreign company operating in India had earmarked money to help us construct a school building in a backward area in Haryana. Under pressure, it diverted the money to PM CARES, where it earns Modi interest!

Calamity after calamity has struck India. If an emergency fund accumulates thousands of crores but spends only a tiny fraction of its corpus, questions are legitimate. You either do not know these things or pretend not to know them. It is easy to wake up someone who is asleep; it is much harder to wake someone who pretends to be asleep.

You also insinuated that Christians convert poor people. I have a simple challenge: show me one person who was converted by being paid money. Indians may be poor, but don't think they are purchasable. It is an insult even to think so.

Goswami claimed that his reporter, during a sting operation, was asked to convert and marry a local person. If that happened, why was a criminal complaint not filed against the person who allegedly made the offer? Journalism does not become more credible merely because it is dramatic.

Goswami also mentioned that you had appeared for him in a case. There are poor Christians in Indian jails accused falsely of trying to convert people. If you really want to demonstrate your concern for Christians, take up the case of at least one such poor accused without charging a fee. You waxed eloquent about freedom of religion. In the constituency your father once represented, Christians cannot have a prayer meeting in their homes. A small gang with saffron shawls can enter any church and harass the worshippers with impunity.

Show the courage to speak up against harassment of Christians and Muslims. You will immediately stop getting briefs from the government, and Arnab Goswami will say you have shown your true colours.

You lamented that in London you have to wear a "cheap" Apple Watch as otherwise you may be mugged, and mentioned that your wife was once mugged. Yet you don't want to leave London. That is your choice. But you also spoke proudly about India's economic rise and about a private company developing a launch vehicle.

Do you know that more than 100 people resigned from ISRO, forcing the government to intervene? Some ISRO programmes have also suffered setbacks.

You mentioned Ayodhya. I understand that the temple trust too has an FCRA account. Under the proposed regime, authorities have significant powers concerning property acquired or created from foreign contributions if violations are proved. Yes, no district magistrate will ever order acquisition of the temple, whatever be the misuse of public money. That may not be true about a small school built by a Christian agency.

You said an affected organisation could approach the courts. Of course it can. But how many small NGOs can afford to engage a lawyer of your stature? You also mentioned representing ITC, arguing that otherwise foreign cigarette brands would have swallowed the Indian market.

Forgive me, Sir, but that sounds rather ridiculous. There is nothing wrong in representing a tobacco company; lawyers have clients and clients pay lawyers. But higher profits for ITC would naturally mean higher professional fees for its lawyers. It need not be presented as a patriotic crusade.

You told a touching story about a poor boy who, when you were 11, touched your father's jeep and your T-shirt to find out whether they were real. The tragedy is that millions of Indians remain in that same condition even today. The Prime Minister himself says his government provides free food-grains to around 80 crore people.

When William Carey, the Christian missionary, arrived in India in the early nineteenth century, one of the first things he did was to set up a school where every child was welcome. Whatever one's view of missionary activity, education remains the best antidote to poverty. Today, tens of thousands of government schools have been closed in parts of northern India. Perhaps that tells us something about priorities.

And that is what disturbed me most about your interview. I have no problem with your wealth, your hotel suite, your watches, your international legal practice or your clients. You have every right to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

But success imposes a responsibility. When a person of your stature speaks about Christians, NGOs, foreign funding and poverty, millions listen. Your words can either challenge prejudice or reinforce it.

You have the rare privilege of being heard by people who may never hear a poor Christian, a small NGO worker, a freelance writer like me or an undertrial prisoner or a child whose education depends on a scholarship. I wish you had used that privilege differently.

You may dismiss this letter as the ramblings of an old journalist, two years your senior. That is your privilege. I have seen wealth, power, poverty, generosity, and hypocrisy at close quarters. I have learnt one simple lesson: a person's religion tells me little about his character; his actions tell me everything.

Yours etc.,