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The “neech” remark that Mani Shankar Aiyar made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was hotly debated on primetime news by politicians and used during the Gujarat election rallies as a war-cry against elitism, was misconstrued and convoluted by all, wrote Aiyar wrote in a blog on NDTV.com.
Aiyar claims that his remark, which drew such ire that it was dubbed “inappropriate adjective,” was, in fact, a “double fault.”
The Congress leader wrote that his father was a highly educated chartered accountant and income tax advisor, who passed away when he was still a boy. But, his mother still ensured that his two brothers and him got an English education in the country’s “most expensive school.”
Not being able to speak Hindi without fumbling and even mixing up the genders is what Aiyar claims led to his “second fault.”
Aiyar built a good rapport with his school’s Hindi teacher whose Hindi stories Aiyar would translate into English, and the teacher would return the favour by doing the same with Aiyar’s stories.
Being a diplomat by default meant lengthy interactions and correspondences in English, which only changed after his stint in Pakistan.
This is when he began speaking in Hindi, also beginning to appear on TV, but his language was never rooted in cultural milieu nor was it peppered with literary references and colloquialisms that were part of the parlance of his compatriots.
Aiyar writes that a friend and former boss told him what “neech” meant colloquially.
Aiyar concluded that it would always reverberate in his ears:
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