Congress Party shows its disconnect with the grassroots by correcting a minister Mandaviya’s English online

The Congress party started what is today known as Lutyen’s culture. One of the pillars of this culture is that the ruling class that resides in Lutyen’s Delhi must speak “fluent English”. Whether they are well versed in their mother tongue, very efficient in administration, performed excellently throughout their career, rose through the ranks with hard work and determination despite humble beginnings – all these qualities do not matter unless one is not fluent in English.

This kind of elitism was visible when senior Congress leaders like Mani Shankar Aiyar tried to make fun of the Prime Ministerial candidate for being a Chaiwala, and also when they mocked BJP for being a “talentless” party just because the majority of its prefer to use mother-tongue instead of English in general conversations.

Historians like Ramchandra Guha argue that India’s right-wing (although not a right term, thus read Hindu Nationalists) has no intellectuals because the plethora of intellectual literature that the Hindu nationalists have produced is in Indian languages.

Congress and other leftists were fine and enjoyed Lalu’s “fruit tree” English as for them it’s a man from a troubled background trying to learn. But if a man belonging to a nationalist party and not that well-versed with the English language, tries to communicate in English, the elites would start questioning that person’s intellectual ability and overall administrative skills.

This elitist mindset was visible once again when the Congress leaders mocked newly appointed Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya because his tweets were grammatically incorrect. Congress leaders and social media influencers circulated screenshots of Mandaviya’s tweets in which he has written grammatically incorrect sentences.

The Congress IT cell even tried to make #MansukhEnglish among the top trends on Twitter.

Rahul Gandhi tried to be sarcastic and asked, “Does this mean no more vaccine shortage?”

Trolling of a person just because he does not know the language of our colonizers shows the kind of mindset that Congress, its leaders, and some sections of Indian elites possess. These people see the country as a colonial construct rather than as a historical entity that is defined by geography and has existed since time immemorial.

There is a very strong theme in history, which argues that the modern Indian nation is a colonial construct, and there was no sense of sacred geography before the British came to India.

This theory is of colonial origin. The British people, who wanted to deny India its freedom, very strongly propagated this theory in the intellectual discourse, and through this, the British wanted to end the intellectual argument for India’s freedom. The British argued that the colonial construct of British India would fall apart if the nation is given freedom.

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After India got freedom, this intellectual argument was perpetuated by Anglophile academics and many Marxist historians. And this argument still finds space, especially in our English newspapers, and among the Anglophile upper class of the country. The elitist people of the Lutyen’s gang, whose ancestors were pets of the British, perpetuate this view even today.

Trolling Mansukh Mandaviya for his English is not just an attack on the new health minister, it is also an attack on PM Modi. The chaiwala jibe is still fresh in people’s minds and the common men understand the beginnings and hardships PM Modi has to go through to be in the position he is now. The people of India would not withstand such outrageous comments as it is a crass commentary on the humble beginnings of PM Modi.

The chaiwala jibe led to the humiliating defeat of the Congress party in 2014 and it has not recovered from the same yet, but the party and its lackeys refuse to learn a lesson. Given the kind of democratic resurgence India is experiencing, Congress is very unlikely to get received unless it drops the elitist mindset.