MANI SHANKAR AIYER--A PEDANTIC DIDACTIC by Mihir Srivastava
- Mihir Srivastava
- 10 hours ago
- 5 min read
Mani Shankar Aiyar is a public intellectual with a gift of the gab. A Stephanian, whose father died when he was young, a student; he did well for himself and joined the coveted Indian Foreign Service in 1963, after pursuing a degree in Oxford where he had a brief interaction with Rajiv Gandhi.
Twenty-two years later, he joined Rajiv’s prime minister office as a joint secretary and went on to become one of the most powerful bureaucrats. Rajiv undid his monumental mandate, and lost the next general elections in 1989, is when Mani had joined politics. Thanks to his proximity to the Gandhis, or 10 Janpath to be precise, he eventually became the Panchayati Raj minister, and is credited for the 73rd Amendment Act of the constitution that gave constitutional status to Panchayati Raj Institutions.
The ground beneath the feet is slipping away, yet he's motivated by frustration of being made redundant by the same set of qualities that endeared him to the power when he was half his age. One has to give the devil its due, or else will write an open letter to usurp it.
His facility with words, and that he always has things to say, has kept him in good stead. He writes a good copy; also makes a good copy. His alienation with Rahul Gandhi and hatred from Narendra Modi, I get the impression, has the same intensity, and keeps him going. It has made him unsuitable for the assignments he craves for at the ripe age of 85. People in his, still his, party have arrived at a unanimous conclusion: he's a big mouthed liability. And they are perhaps giving him a silent exit, but Mani being Mani, he’s making noise about it.
The ground beneath the feet is slipping away, yet he's motivated by frustration of being made redundant by the same set of qualities that endeared him to the power when he was half his age. One has to give the devil its due, or else will write an open letter to usurp it.
Mani serves a purpose and I'm glad he's around doing what he does with an element of disdain: erudite blabber. We all need zester, to rake up issues, and talk about people with contempt, judge, and pass judgement, make tall pronouncements, without an iota of self-reflection. Chirag tale andhera.
They say old habits die hard, sometimes perpetuated with age. I’m not an ageist and can’t pass all the blame solely on greying hairs. Some of his contemporaries have aged well, who have shunned the need to shame others to try prove how good they’re. Some are his fellow students from the St Stephen’s College, say that Mani has not changed in all these years, remains what he always was, blessed with a penchant for deliberately putting foot in the mouth.
Mani has lost the favour of the current generation of leadership in the Congress party, led by the son of, not wrong to say, his political mentor, for his forthrightness has caused the party a lot of embarrassment. And no one will subscribe to his what he said against the prime minister Narendra Modi: ‘Ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, iss mein koi sabhyata nahi hai...(This person is a very low sort, he has no civility)."
Who talks like this? He has been issuing justifications for what he meant, was never good enough, will never be. Though is indicative of superfluous sense of superiority of this Tam-Brahim who was born in Lahore.
Lately, he’s directed his attention to fellow Congressmen more than the BJP. Mani supported Shashi Tharoor when he stood for the elections of the Congress President without the blessings of the Gandhis. ‘In consequence, the Gandhis and Kharge have refused to meet me ever since,’ Mani writes in an open letter to Shashi.
In the same letter, which was in reaction to what Shashi had to say about the ‘ongoing illegal and sinful war on Iran by Israel in cahoots with the US’ in an interview last month. Mani couldn’t sleep, instead spent the sleepless wee hours to pen an open letter to Shashi—very demonstrative about his hurt feelings, and to let the world see that he backed the wrong horse.
Mani writes “I have searched my mind to find a basic reason for your unprincipled, amoral, and transactional approach to public policy, most particularly in your area of specialisation: foreign policy. And the only reason I have been able to find is that you were born in 1956, 15 years after me, and, therefore, fell outside the ambit of the direct influence of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru.’
And when I searched my mind with the question why is Mani doing it all so publicly, I felt, it’s pure and simple jealousy. Shashi speaks his mind, but not like Mani, and, more often than not, doesn’t toe the party line, and the prime minister likes him. Despite all this, Shashi gets an audience with the Gandhis. And Mani doesn’t. Perhaps, this act of public castigation of Shashi may endear Mani enough to get an audience with Sonia or Rahul or Priyanka.
The British have left; Mani kind of people are the residue. He writes to Shashi, ‘scholarly, modern-minded St. Stephen’s graduate, and postgraduate from an Ivy League college, could be so backward as to endorse a thoroughly sexist, gender-discriminatory practice that punishes women only because of their natural bodily functions.’ What has backwardness to do with studying abroad? It makes me wonder: is Mani’s modernity imported? It's high time Mani realised, might have but will never acknowledge, Shashi is better at the game.
Frustrations boils down to personal attacks. Recently Mani severely criticized K C Venugopal who’s very close to Rahul Gandhi. He is not charismatic and public speaking is not his forte. Mani described him as "rowdy." And elevating Venugopal to a high status is indicative of a poor state of affairs within the Congress leadership.
"How stupid can a party be than to make Pawan Khera the spokesman. There are a billion people in congress who make a better spokesperson. He’s just a puppet. He’s just saying what Jairam Ramesh tells him,” he attacked the national spokesperson of the congress party.
Well, whatever Mani may have to say, Pawan is making the right noise for his party, and has emerged as the staunchest critic of the Modi government, and one can say, has taken the battle to the enemy's camp. And it’s not easy to put it mildly.
“Pawan Khera is going to expel me, I’ll happily go outside, and kick his backside after I leave,” says Mani. Well, if he has been shown the door by the party—which is the case for all practical purposes—who got kicked out?!
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