Aiyar was wrong, and got what he deserved

Former Congress MP (and one-time minister) Mani Shankar Aiyar’s use of the Hindi word “neech” to describe Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday is downright “neech”, to give it back to him. It doesn’t behove people in responsible positions to use such language, especially in the public sphere.

In common parlance, the expression just means “low grade”, and is the equivalent of the more common Hindi word “ghatiya”. There is no caste or class connotation implied, though an angry Mr Modi has tried to spin it that way, presumably to get backward castes worked up in his favour on the eve of the crucial Assembly elections in Gujarat.

Rahul Gandhi, who will take over as Congress president in a few days, criticised Mr Aiyar and asked him to apologise. The erring Congressman’s primary membership of the party was also suspended. The Congress fears a possible negative electoral fallout of the unbecoming language Mr Aiyar used.

However, what Mr Gandhi did was the right thing to do. The BJP could take a leaf out of his book. In the past three or four years, the saffron party’s tallest leaders have allowed the tone and tenor of public discourse to go downhill (almost competing with the AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal).

This doesn’t in any way make Mr Aiyar right, and the Congressman got what he deserves. The former MP is well-educated. He also has a slashing tongue that is unmindful of context or occasion. As a Sanskrit shloka teaches us, a clever enemy may be better than a foolish friend. Innumerable party colleagues of Mr Aiyar have been at the receiving end of his supposed witticisms and have deeply resented it.

Over the years, Mr Aiyar has exhausted any uses he may have had for the Congress, and he was never a politician to start with. While he had a high media profile (having been the late Rajiv Gandhi’s schoolfriend and later aide), it is wrong to think of him as a “senior Congressman”, an expression which suggests he may carry weight in the party hierarchy or is of organisational significance. The PM’s description of Mr Aiyar as an important Congressman is an election-time spin; no more.

If anything, the witty Mr Aiyar is a political gadfly who best fits the expression “disgruntled Congressman”, rather than a “Gandhi family loyalist”, which he never was, although he was a Rajiv loyalist and perhaps will always be a passionate partisan of Nehruvian thought and ideals. The last is why the Hindu Right doesn’t like him and why he doesn’t like them.

Some speculate Mr Aiyar’s regrettable selection of words could make a difference between victory and defeat for the Congress in Gujarat. This seems an exaggerated view. It’s more likely that those already with the BJP will be affected by the former MP’s boorish language.