Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar has said that the controversy over the remarks made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with regard to minorities could have been avoided had the language and grammar of the latter's speech been better.
"While there may be scope for improving the grammar and the language, let us get to the substance of the issue," he told Karan Thapar in an interview for CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate show.
"I am not the speech writer (of Dr Singh). I am not the preparer of clarificatory statements," he remarked, when told that the PMO's clarification on the December 9 address did not refer to any grammatical or language flaw.
Aiyar, who had been the speech writer for late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, maintained that the prime minister 'intended' to include all disadvantaged groups but said it was 'appropriate' that special attention should be given to one of such categories whose 'extent of disadvantage' had been brought to the public realm in the 'extraordinarily important' report of the Sachar committee.
"But I do not think that there is any cause for this storm of controversy. It is a contrived storm," he said while referring to the row over Dr Singh's speech at the National Development Council meet.
When pointed out that Union Ministers A R Antulay and Kapil Sibal had also come to the conclusion that Dr Singh meant that minorities, particularly Muslims, had the first claim on resources, he again referred to the Sachar committee that he said had come out with a 'very disturbing truth.'
"They (Antulay and Sibal) were doing it because there was a time context in addition to a word context. The Sachar committee report had just come out and it had revealed a very disturbing truth about our society. The prime minister's reference, even if it was to Muslims, was to an issue that I think we need to address, that there is a disadvantaged group in the country," he said.
Minorities, particularly Muslims, he remarked, were among several categories that 'ought to have' a priority claim on resources.
"The Sachar report throws up two very interesting facets. On the one hand, the Muslims really are a deprived community on several different indices, and, secondly, there has been some success in pulling a substantial number of Muslims above the poverty line but still leaving them extremely poor," Aiyar noted.
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