Sir — This refers to the report, “‘Neech’ lands Aiyar in Cong soup” (December 8). Being familiar with Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar from service days, when he was the Director of External Publicity Division, Ministry of External Affairs, and its official spokesman, one is not surprised at his characteristic snobbery and arrogance, as revealed in his neech remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Earlier, Aiyar was guilty of contemptuously calling the Prime Minister a chaiwala, he even crudely offered him a job in the Congress canteen to sell tea! Way back in 1983, Aiyar was temporarily suspended from his assignment as the official spokesman for the Commonwealth conference held in New Delhi, in his capacity as the joint secretary of the
External Publicity wing of the Ministry of External Affairs, because of his loose tongue and some indiscretions.
Aiyar’s explanation for using the derogatory word neech for the Prime Minister was that he did not know different meanings of the word as Tamil is his mother tongue and not Hindi. This is a false pretext. Even the official records mention: MT: Tamil, knows Hindi. It is widely known that Aiyar’s family had spent most of their life in north India, including pre-partition lahore. His wife is north Indian, his three daughters have reportedly married north Indians. He has thorough command of Hindi (Hindustani).