Help understanding this sentence structure: "many a congressman was"

Question

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of India. Below is a quote from his autobiography.

Many a Congressman was a communalist under his national cloak

I am sure this sentence is grammatically correct but somehow I find it quite unnatural, particularly the "many a congressman was" part. Shouldn't this sentence be simply written as:

Many congressmen were communalist under their national cloak

Can someone please explain the above quote and maybe give some common examples of similar usage?

In addition to the question this has been closed as a duplicate of, and other questions in our dedicated tag, do note that you can find many a in many a dictionary. — RegDwigнt, Dec 05 '13 at 19:24

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 05 '13 at 18:37

Both of your constructions are correct. The phrasing in the one found in the book is an older phrasing that you may see more often in older texts (or texts wanting to seem older).

For example:

"Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one." -Bertrand Russell

It is most often used when talking figuratively about a group. In the quote above we are not referring specifically to a group of "many men", but more that of all of the men, many of them (and we don't necessarily know which) may have courage.

Help understanding this sentence structure: "many a congressman was"

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