Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday raised in the Lok Sabha the attack on his office in Kerala allegedly by BJP workers and linked it to the general atmosphere of intolerance in the country that prompted incidents like lynching.

MP Tharoor said: "I am sorry to raise before this House the attack on my constituency office in Thiruvananthapuram and the death threats that I received from members of the ruling party in response to my criticism of far-Right extremism.

"This is a larger attempt by incendiary elements and their digital equivalents to destroy the idea of India as a pluralistic and accepting democracy."

Tharoor added that the "victims" of these elements in recent months included intellectuals and minorities.

"Yesterday, even Swami Agvinesh was attacked. These are people who have expressed dissent against rising intolerance in today's India and they are being attacked.

"In doing so, they are disregarding the singular principle of our historic democratic consensus, which is that in a diverse democracy like ours, you do not need to agree all the time so long as you will agree on the ground rules of how you will disagree," Tharoor said.

Amidst protests by BJP members who objected to the allegation, Tharoor said: "But it is not what we are seeing in the streets where the ground rules of our democracy are being betrayed by those who have been elected by the people of India as a ruling party and they are betraying this basic ground rule.

"We cannot and should not stand by as communal violence, mob lynching and hooliganism replace rule of law and rights guaranteed by our Constitution."

Tharoor urged the Prime Minister to break his silence "on the behaviour of his own party men and take action against these anti-national elements and anti-Indian elements who seek to abridge the freedom of speech in our democracy".

Minister Ananth Kumar responded saying: "A very senior member like Shashi Tharoor cannot make unfounded and baseless allegation on political party workers and leaders of parties. If something has happened in Kerala, then he should go for a probe."