New Delhi: Mani Shankar Aiyar, suspended by the Congress for calling the Prime Minister " neech" in the run-up to the Gujarat elections, has argued that Narendra Modi had misquoted him by adding an extra word to give his comment a caste connotation.

Aiyar had called Modi a " neech kisma ka admi", which is open to translation as "vile man" or "lowly man", and the Prime Minister had alleged an insult to his caste origins and home state.

"In my mind, however, the question will always reverberate: was it my 'inappropriate adjective' or Modi's mendacity in adding an utterly untrue noun - ' jaati' (caste) - to my adjective that lost us this handful of seats (in Gujarat)?" Aiyar has written in an article published on the NDTV website on Tuesday. "And, tell me, should I sue the Prime Minister for slander, libel, defamation - or all three?"

Contacted by The Telegraph for an explanation, Aiyar said: "I don't want to talk to the media. I have written whatever I had to say on this issue."

Aiyar has been telling his political colleagues that the media deliberately aided the controversy by choosing not to highlight that Modi had turned a purported personal jibe into a caste slur.

Aiyar appears to appreciate, though, that he had slipped up and seems to mainly blame his inadequate understanding of the nuances of Hindi.

"At least 10 seats were lost by a few thousand votes. Those few thousand votes could be linked to my 'haw-haw education', to my 'arrogance', to my 'elitism', to my having been born to Brahmin parents - or to my inadequate grasp of colloquial Hindi," wrote Aiyar, a Tamilian educated at Doon School, St Stephen's College and Cambridge.

Revealing that former foreign minister Natwar Singh had explained to him that " neech" was not used literally so much as "low" but as "gutter", he wrote: "I had, in effect, compared Modi to a 'guttersnipe'. I would never have done that in English.... That was bad enough. But it got further worsened when Modi, then desperately campaigning in his home state to forestall what many foresaw as his party's certain defeat, seized opportunity by the forelock.

"Within a few minutes - or was it seconds - of my saying what I said to a news agency, he grabbed the word and blatantly lied that I had said he belonged to a ' neech jaati'."

Aiyar added: "I never had, I never would. It was not that Modi twisted the meaning of the word. He just falsely and deliberately added another word - jaati - that I had never, never used. My inappropriate adjective is on full display on YouTube for anyone who cares to look to see. Equally, Modi's blatant lie is on YouTube, for anyone who cares to look. But few, if any, have, damn the facts."