Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar insisted recently that he had never dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “chaiwala” — outlining the 2014 controversy in a new book. The diplomat-turned-politician also ruminated on his turbulent decades-long relationship with the Gandhi family — contending that they had both ‘made and unmade’ his political career.
The senior Congress leader claims in the forthcoming book that he was “utterly horrified” to see Modi touted as a Prime Ministerial candidate in 2014 — a person he believed was “irretrievably stained by the 2002 carnage” in Gujarat. Aiyar recalled stressing during an interview that it was outrageous for a man who did not know that Alexander had never come to Pataliputra or that Taxila (Takshashila) was in present day Pakistan to seek to step into Jawaharlal Nehru’s shoes.
“The people of India would never accept this, I said, adding, ‘Never! Never! Never!’ in thundering tones. I then quipped that if, after he lost the election, Modi still wanted to serve tea, we could make some arrangements for him here,” he writes for A Maverick in Politics.
Aiyar noted that the person who said he was a ‘chaiwala’ was Modi himself – in order to “stress his somewhat doubtful claim to humble beginnings”.
“This was touted then – and ever since – as my having said that Modi could not become PM because he was a ‘chaiwallah’. I never called Modi a ‘chaiwallah’ and never advanced his having been a ‘chaiwallah’ as the reason for my believing he would never make it to the post of PM,” he added.
As the alleged remark gained ground, the Congress party and leadership gradually became convinced that Aiyar had “upset the applecart”.
“The media and Modi played out my alleged (but wholly untrue) remark about Modi being unfit to rule as PM because (as he claimed) he had begun life as a ‘chaiwallah’. This was no more than a hollow election gimmick…It gave the handle to elements in the Congress party to divert attention from the real causes of the party’s humiliating collapse at the hustings to shift the blame on this one remark put out in sarcastic — if sneering — jest,” Aiyar writes.
“No one cared to ask me or check the video. No one paused to ask themselves whether, given my personal background and my long record of diplomatic and political service, I could ever have thrown out a casteist slur. No one even checked out Modi’s long record of twisting words in no-holds-barred election contests, where facts and truth are the first casualty,” he added.
(With inputs from agencies)
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