Kharge invokes Sardar Patel, Gandhi’s assassination to demand ban on RSS

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday demanded a ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological front of the ruling BJP, invoking the country’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Addressing a press conference on the ocassion of Patel’s 150th birth anniversary, he said Patel had always maintained that RSS speeches were filled with “poison of communalism”.

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“It was because of the RSS that Gandhiji was assassinated,” the Congress President stated.

Expressing his personal opinion, Kharge asserted that the RSS should be banned in the country.

Slamming the saffron party, he said the very people who assassinated the Mahatma are today questioning the Congress.

Emphasizing that Patel had laid the foundation of democratic ideals, Kharge also demanded that the government restore the ban on government employees from attending RSS events.

“In earlier times, people used to propagate the ideology of the RSS while being in the bureaucracy. In such a situation, a ban was imposed on government employees’ association with political organizations like the RSS and Jamaat-e-Islami,” Kharge pointed out.

“However, on July 9, 2024, the Modi government lifted this ban, thereby allowing government employees to join the RSS and participate in its activities,” the Congress leader alleged.

Kharge said the RSS was banned by Sardar Patel after its members were allegedly involved in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He further demanded that the order lifting the ban on government employees from attending RSS events must be revoked. “That decision should be set aside,” he added.

He also rejected the BJP’s claim that there was a difference of opinion between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel.

“While Nehru Ji himself had called Sardar Patel the ‘architect of India’s unity,’ Patel Ji had referred to Nehru Ji as the ‘ideal of the country and leader of the people,'” Kharge recalled.

He further quoted Patel as saying, “In the last two difficult years, no one knows better than me the tireless hard work that Nehru Ji has done for the country. The grand history of the great achievements of the country’s ideal, the people’s leader, the nation’s Prime Minister, and everyone’s favorite Jawaharlal is an open book before everyone.”