Congress suspends Aiyar over 'neech' remark against PM Modi

New Delhi: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday triggered a major storm calling Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi" (base), which the Prime Minister gave a caste angle, telling an election rally in Gujarat that describing him as "neech jaati" (low born) was an insult to Gujaratis who will vote out the Congress in the assembly elections.

In a damage-control move, the Congress on Thursday night suspended Aiyar from its primary membership and slapped a show cause notice on him for the remark that mushroomed into a massive controversy - two days ahead of the Gujarat first-phase polls.

Earlier, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi deprecated Aiyar's language against the Prime Minister and asked him to apologize, which the former Union Minister did, claiming his knowledge of Hindi was not good. Aiyar clarified that he never called Modi a "low born".

As Aiyar's remarks that Modi was a "neech aadmi" (low-life) in the context of his criticism of the Congress vis-a-vis B.R. Ambedkar snowballed, the Prime Minister referred to it in an election meeting in Surat and attacked the Congress leader, saying he had called him a "neech jaati" (low caste).

"They can call me 'neech jaati'. Yes, I am from the poor section of society and will spend every moment of my life to work for the poor, Dalits, tribals and backward classes. That is my culture. They can keep their language, we will do our work," Modi told an election rally.

"Yes, I used the word 'neech'. Now, I am not a Hindi speaker and I translate from English to Hindi. So I used 'low person', I translated 'low' in my mind. If it happened to mean something else. I apologize. 'Neech' as I understand is a direct translation of 'low'.

"I never meant 'low born'. In English there's a clear distinction between 'low' and 'low born'. It is very possible that in Hindi -- which is not my natural language and which I learned after much effort -- I translated 'low' as 'neech'. But if neech also means 'low born' then I apologize that I used a word which can be interpreted in many ways, and in the way Modiji is interpreting it, I have nothing to do with that.

"The Congress party has suspended Mani Shankar Aiyar from party's primary membership and issued him a show-cause notice," Surjewala said."This is Congress party's Gandhiwaad and sense of respect towards its rivals. Can Modiji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) ever show such conviction?" he added.The development comes as Rahul Gandhi is set to go to Gujarat on Friday for two days of campaigning for the second phase of polls, slated on December 14.