Grateful or not, Cong calls it a Freudian slip

The ad errs disastrously: it uses the word krutaghna.

The Congress has already found a political handle in the slip. The slip, the Gujarat unit of the party says, is Freudian. A statement from Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee vice-president and spokesman Hasmukh Patel says the slip ‘‘gives away the deep-rooted ungratefulness of the Sangh Parivar to Mahatma Gandhi.’’

The press note implies that the error could have only got past the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition at the Centre (DAVP is a central agency) and the BJP government in Gujarat.

To rub it in, the Congress highlights the difference in the two words by quoting from the Brihad Shabdakosh, a standard reference dictionary of Gujarati written by philologist K.K. Shastri, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad stalwart sympathetic to the BJP.

Wags, however, may describe this inversion as a rare example of truthfulness, so beloved of the Mahatma, in a nation that seems to have forgotten his ideals.