Adam Patel, Baron Patel of Blackburn

Adam Hafejee Patel, Baron Patel of Blackburn (7 June 1940 – 29 May 2019) was a British businessman and Labour Member of the House of Lords.

Quotes

 * Wharton’s refusal to Narendra Modi weakens free speech and the quest for justice in 2002 riot cases... In order to listen to someone, one does not need to be an ardent follower or a bitter critic... Freedom of expression knows no boundary. The more we listen to people and ideas, the more enriched we get. When an educational institution gets prescriptive on the kind of speech one can and cannot listen to on the campus, it kills intellectual freedom, a democratic idea that the U.S.A., India, and the U.K. have cherished from times immemorial...Cancelling lectures will not help, in fact it will present Modi- baiters in [a] poor light that they have extinguished all points of reason and debate to have had to resort to such an action...As a Gujarati myself, I consider it to be a gross insult that the chief minister of my state, however wrong one may feel he is, cannot express his views at a global forum, such as the one in Wharton, because a few in the audience don’t like him....
 * Lord Patel, quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.