Amid Racist Remark Row, Sam Pitroda Resigns From Indian Overseas Congress Post

New Delhi: Sam Pitroda has resigned as Chairman of Indian Overseas Congress in the wake of a major political controversy over his racist comment on how Indians from different parts of the country look.

“Mr Sam Pitroda has decided to step down as Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress of his own accord. The Congress President has accepted his decision,” Jairam Ramesh, the party’s General Secretary in-charge Communications, posted on X on Wednesday evening.

Pitroda said in an interview how Indians lived together unitedly in the last 75 years because the Congress held the country together despite so much diversity. Elaborating on the diversity, Pitroda said people in the east look like the Chinese, south like Africans, west like the Arabs.

“We could hold the country as diverse as India together… Where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans. It does not matter. All of us are brothers and sisters. We respect different languages, different religions, different customs, different food,” Pitroda said.

Congress immediately dissociated itself from Pitroda’s remarks.

“The analogies drawn by Mr Sam Pitroda in a podcast to illustrate India’s diversity are most unfortunate and unacceptable. The Indian National Congress completely dissociates itself from these analogies,” Ramesh said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to pounce on Pitroda’s racist remarks at his rallies in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday.

He said he was angry over what Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Sam uncle’ said on the skin colour of Indians. He said Congress opposed Droupadi Murmu’s presidential nomination because they saw her as an African owing to her dark skin. Modi also wondered whether Congress chief ministers of Telangana and Karnataka would accept the analogy and whether Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin would snap DMK’s ties with the Congress.

Pitroda, currently based in the USA, was Rajiv Gandhi’s advisor when the latter was the prime minister.

After Congress-headed UPA won the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Pitroda was invited by then-PM Manmohan Singh to head the National Knowledge Commission of India. In 2009, he became an advisor to Manmohan Singh on public information infrastructure.

Sam Pitroda is not new to controversies but this time his flub went beyond any damage control as the Congress distanced itself from what he said and called his statement unfortunate.