Mani Shankar Aiyar- The Subservient Man

“I promise you in 21st Century Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country. …But if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him." This was Mani Shankar Aiyar's caustic claim in January this year, a gratuitous insult which I am certain embarrasses Aiyar today.

He is wrong at so many levels. Mani Shankar Aiyar is a supercilious, a blatantly pompous, intellectual who believes that anyone who has not studied at The Doon School, St Stephen's College, and the University of Cambridge is devoid of the cognitive moorings to engage with him. An illusion which mirror the manifold misconceptions which plague him.

His cavalier attitude has not taken him very far. His drubbing at the hustings this year has made him even more belligerent. Shashi Tharoor, very recently, was very vocal about his positive views on Narendra Modi. This distressed Aiyar of course.  

A disgruntled man like Aiyar is a pleasure to watch on television. He is petulant and headstrong. What makes him more ferocious is his tenacity. He is an argumentative man. Nobody takes him seriously. When he goes on a tirade he is louder and more trenchant than the feared Arnab Goswami. His displeasure stems from the fact that he cannot introspect and hold the Congress party accountable for its blunders. The man's problem is his myopic vision. He simply cannot look past the Congress and all their, oh glorious, achievements. His loyalties to the Gandhi family and the ostensibly impeccable credentials of Rahul prevent him from engaging in any meaningful debate. Aiyar is a reservoir of knowledge and a seasoned politician. His incisiveness and perspicacity are traits which defined him. They seem to have eroded over time. Rahul is more intellectually competent is what he makes himself believe.

His lofty disdain for the Prime Minister is well known. He despises Mr. Narendra Modi. The Supreme Court may have given him a clean chit in connection with the carnage in 2002, and thus laid all perennial doubts to rest, but you see Modi's humble background seems to irk Aiyar. "How can a man with an austere lifestyle be catapulted to position of Prime Minister when he is not even loyal to the Congress?" is what he must be pondering over. 

The Congress party is supreme in his views. He will not miss one opportunity to target the BJP and Modi's apparent complicity in 2002 but in his tirade he will overlook the 1984 riots and the Bhopal Gas tragedy in the same year. The carnage in Delhi that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination was a doing of the public. Media reports about Congressman who incited mobs are erroneous. "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes", the impetuous remark made by Rajiv Gandhi, which fuelled the riots, was insignificant. The firebrands who traipsed the bloody streets of Delhi annihilating the Sikh community will never find any mention in his remarks. The perpetrators remain scot free but he will, again, never draw his attention to this grave injustice. But he will portray the respected Prime Minister as a blood sucking serpent who by himself slaughtered hundreds of Muslims. Our Prime Minister harbours no malicious intentions. I wonder when he will understand this point.

The flouting of environmental regulations and the indifference of the administration in dispensing justice to the survivors of the Bhopal Gas tragedy more than 25 years later will never be discussed at length by him. Why was Anderson allowed to leave the country and not incarcerated? Was it the Rajiv Gandhi government in the center which facilitated his movement out of the country? These issues will never be broached by Mani Shankar Aiyar.

The Congress till this election had always had strong UP connections. Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shashtri, Rajiv Gandhi, all contested from UP. But the state of affairs in the state is dreadful. The list of scams under the UPA regime is interminable. But Mani Shankar conveniently overlooks them or offers plausible explanations defending the Congress.

He must shed away his veneer of sophistication and understand the ground realities. A sizeable percentage of the voting population has cast their verdict favoring Narendra Modi. Relentlessly pursuing an ideology is a futile task. He is fighting a losing battle. Reminiscing about the Rajiv Gandhi years and the infallibility of the Congress is taking him nowhere. It is a dead end. He must carve his individual self-identity in the changing political dynamics or history will remember him otherwise.