New Delhi:
Sam Pitroda's controversial remarks were not a slip of the tongue but revealed the mindset of his Congress party and that of the people he has mentored, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in a veiled reference to Rahul Gandhi.
Sam Pitroda resigned as head of the party's overseas unit after sparking a major controversy this week with his comments during a podcast in which he cited ethnic and racial identities such as Chinese, African, Arab and white to explain the physical appearance of Indians describe different parts of the country. .
“I think what he said is probably the conversations in the circles he lives in, possibly shared by people he has mentored, and I think there were two parts that were disturbing to me,” Jaishankar told PTI in an interview with PTI. exclusive interview at the news agency's headquarters late Thursday.
“One of what you called typecasting and racial stereotyping. I think that was disturbing to me. The second was actually the feeling that you know what the comment implies – that there are very different people, and somehow someone put it together. It took some effort to bring them all together to make India even more disturbing,” he said.
“Because that is actually the colonial way of defining India. You know, it took an outside force; it took an outside force or an inorganic effort to bring a country together. I think we have a natural organic unity,” he said. said.
Sam Pitroda was an advisor to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and was closely associated with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who accompanied him during his foreign visits.
The foreign minister said Mr Pitroda's comments reflected a certain way of thinking.
“For me, India is a civilization; it is, in a sense, a belief system. It's something that's in our soul, it's in our kind of spirit, and he obviously doesn't share it,” he said.
Mr. Jaishankar further added: “To me this is a certain kind of thinking, a thinking that likes to… that actually assumes that we are in bits and pieces and somewhere in their eyes, a ruler or perhaps a family, someone put something together.” The foreign secretary said Pitroda's comments “revealed” the Congress's “colonial mentality.”
Asked if he was willing to consider the comments as immature, Mr Jaishankar said: “You know, he is not exactly a young person, so you can't say it is immature. Here's a person who's been around the block a lot. “
“You know, there's a saying that the 'slip of the tongue is a slip of the mind'. So it's basically a mind speaking. It's a mentality…I would just suggest that someone already has been around for a long time, this is clearly the mentality of a party and the mentality of a group of people.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)