JAIPUR: Former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has rejected allegations that he made casteist remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asserting that his comments were directed at the prime minister's "character" and not his caste.
The bureaucrat-turned-politician also said that he is called the "child of Macaulay" for speaking English, and questioned whether PM Modi knows Tamil.
Speaking on the controversy surrounding his alleged past remarks, Aiyar said he never described PM Modi as belonging to a "low caste".
"I never called him a person of 'neecha jaat' (low caste). I said he was a 'low kind of person', referring to his character. That is completely different," he said at a programme in Jaipur on Saturday evening.
Aiyar said his remarks had been misinterpreted and projected in a way that suggested he was referring to his caste. He claimed that the prime minister portrayed the comment as a caste-based insult because Aiyar is a Brahmin.
The former minister also referred to the controversy over his alleged remark that a "tea seller cannot become the prime minister". Aiyar said he had never made such a statement and that the claim attributed to him was incorrect.
"I never said that because he is a tea seller, he cannot become the prime minister," Aiyar said, adding that his criticism was instead directed at what he described as Modi's "lack of historical knowledge".
According to Aiyar, he had questioned how a person who, in his view, did not know certain historical facts could be in the role (of prime minister) that Jawaharlal Nehru had.
He said that he had referred to historical points such as the fact that Alexander never reached Pataliputra and that while Nalanda is in India, Taxila is now in Pakistan.
Aiyar said that after making those remarks, he had jokingly added that if Modi wanted to distribute tea after losing the election, arrangements could be made.
"Who called him a tea seller? Modi himself said he was a tea seller," Aiyar said.
He also raised doubts about Modi's assertion that he sold tea at a railway platform in his hometown Vadnagar, claiming that the town did not have a railway platform until 1973.
Aiyar alleged that such claims and what he described as "misleading narratives" played a role in Modi's rise to the post of prime minister.
He alleged that remarks made about Muslims have contributed to communal polarisation in the country.