Why Mani Shankar Aiyar should watch what he says

Mani Shankar Aiyar is not a known giver of damns. The former cabinet minister from the Congress party and alumnus of Doon School, St Stephen’s College and Trinity Hall at Cambridge seems to be quite the admirer of his ability to verbally put down teammates (as Ajay Maken would like to forget) and the opposition alike.

Being a master of the verbal volley may be an admirable quality to have, but there’s a certain amount of elegance that must necessarily compliment it. One only has to watch (on video) his now deceased OxBridge peer Christopher Hitchens administer his popular "hitchslaps" on people he disagreed with. Hitchens did so without losing sight of the argument that needed a treatment; and he would often seamlessly weave it and its proponent into a single entity before leaving it in tatters (just to be sure, this author disagrees with Hitchens on his views on Iraq war, among other issues. But there’s no denying his verbal wizardry).

Consider Hitchens take-on a rabbi on male circumcision. Rabbi Harold Kushner in a TV debate in 2009 said, "Chris, I need to call you down on referring to circumcision as genital mutilation. My son cried more at his first hair cut than he did at his bris... statistically the only long-term effect that circumcision seems to have on people is that it increases their chances of winning a Nobel Prize."

To this, Christopher replied, "I can’t find the compulsory mutilation of children something for humour this way, or flippancy this way… (makes extended argument against circumcision)… That a person as humane as yourself can sit here and consider that a subject fit for humour, shows what I mean: religion makes morally normal people say and do disgusting and wicked things. Shame on you for saying what you just said. Shame on you for saying it about your own son."

And just like that, an argument had been addressed; and its proponent had been taken down. But I digress.

Mani Shankar Aiyar does not outwardly appear to believe in such a need to address the argument. If he comes off as a condescending snob, so be it. What the Congress party and he may not be aware of – however – is that his words resonate far beyond English language TV studios and the (very English language) social media.

A case in point is what Aiyar quipped ten months ago at an AICC meet. He said, "I promise you in the 21st Century, Narendra Modi will never become the prime minister of the country. But if he wants to distribute tea here (at an AICC meet), we will find a place for him."

The Congress would like to believe that these words died out after an initial outrage on the social media, but they could not be more wrong. Only last month, I found myself in a tiny village in Rajasthan on a trip to see my extended family. Politics – being India’s national pastime – often came up in conversations. Of the many conversations I had, one with a group of farmers who live in a cut-off hamlet (called a bera), stayed with me. One man among them – who does not own a TV or carry a phone – said something on the lines of, "Mani Shankar Aiyar said a chaiwalla cannot be a PM. We showed him that he can."

This sentiment wasn’t a one-off one: that "one of them" could be the prime minister of our country is a thought I have heard being echoed multiple times by the less-than-privileged in different parts of the country.

I strongly suspect that one of the key reasons the Congress’ top leadership – led by Rahul Gandhi – has not taken on social media is that they suspect that social media is a tool of the urban, English-speaking elite, not the poor and deprived, whose votes they seek. What they do not appreciate is that in many parts of rural India, smartphones – like many other commodities in villages – are not strictly "private" in nature. Memes from Twitter and Facebook find their way to Whatsapp messages which spread virally in villages, too. In fact, Whatsapp seems to be the most popular "social network" from my own personal (and admittedly biased) sample.

The minority of those who do own smartphones, willingly show their favourite memes and messages to their friends and kin who do not own phones. The few satellite TV connections in villages are connected to TVs which are viewed by more than just the family which owns them. Supposedly urban memes thus often trickle down to people far beyond they were expected to reach.

Traditional media and social media thus have a far greater reach in rural India than old school (and wannabe old school) politicians would like to believe. Mani Shankar Aiyar and Rahul Gandhi ignore that at their own peril. Oh wait, they already have.