So, What Are You Chinese Or African?

PM pounces on Pitroda's off-colour remarks on Indians even as Congress distances itself from the distasteful analogies

- GAURAV VIVEK BHATNAGAR

Senior Congress leader Sam Pitroda surely suffers from a foot-in-the mouth syndrome. Close on the heels of his inheritance tax analogy, much to the embarrassment of his party, he has now pontificated on how “we have held a country together, as diverse as India, where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the West look like the Arab, people in the North look like Whites and maybe people in the South look like Africans.”

Even as Pitroda squinted through coloured glasses, PM Narendra Modi and others in the BJP lost no time in latching onto the remarks and ran him down and his entire party as “racist”.

Pitroda made these remarks in an interview to ‘The Statesman’, after premising that “we have survived 75 years in a very happy environment where people could live together, leave aside a few fights here and there.”

Taking on the Congress leadership at a rally in Warangal in Telangana, PM Modi, his words dripping with sarcasm, described Pitroda, who is the chairperson of the Indian Overseas Congress, as Rahul Gandhi’s “uncle, guide and philosopher” who resides in the United States.