No Lessons in Diplomacy

These two Congress leaders are known to embarrass their own leaders and party with their loose talk.

Suave and knowledgeable, Congress leaders Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyar are of a similar bent of mind. And in more ways than one: they are known to embarrass their own leaders and party with their loose talk.

While Aiyar earned the displeasure of party leaders over his ‘chaiwala’ remark on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi early this year, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was chided by Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi for describing Modi as ‘impotent’.

Khurshid has done it again.

Now, with elections around the corner, it is not unusual for political rivals to shoot barbs at each other. But Congress leaders themselves are of the view that it was preposterous on Khurshid’s part to take personal potshots at Modi again. This time, he called the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate a ‘nursery child’.

“Modi’s claim of a clean chit in the 2002 riots is like a nursery child claiming to have a PhD,” Khurshid mocked. “If a child in nursery gets good marks, and then the child considers himself to be a doctor and goes around claiming to have a PhD, how can that happen?”

Perhaps Rahul Gandhi, who has warned Khurshid once, needs to be firm.

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