NEW DELHI: Responding to Rahul Gandhi’s diatribe against the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP today said that the Congress vice president as well as his speechwriters “should do proper homework”.
In response to the Congress leader’s comments last week wherein he said that the RSS was responsible for Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, BJP’s senior spokesperson and Member of Parliament Ravi Shankar Prasad quoted a letter written by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to Jawaharlal Nehru in February 1948, in which the former absolved the Sangh of any involvement in the killing.
Prasad quoted the letter from its reproduction in the book, Patel – A Life, written by Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan Gandhi.
“All the accused have given long and detailed statements…It emerges clearly from these statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all. It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through,” Prasad quoted the letter.
Both the RSS as well as the BJP had given angry reactions on Rahul Gandhi’s remarks and the BJP has already registered an official complaint with the Election Commission of India.
Meanwhile, a debate over the ownership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel has started between the Congress and the BJP. Patel, India’s first home minister and deputy prime minister, has featured consistently in the speeches of the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi.
Patel was a Gujarati leader and Modi, as Gujarat’s chief minister has been invoking Patel in an apparent bid to cash in on the widespread popularity of the “Iron Man of India”.
Earlier today, Rahul Gandhi, while speaking at a rally in Gujarat’s Kheda, had said that Patel had once termed the ideology of the RSS as “toxic”.
“People have been with RSS all their life but they should know what (Mahatma) Gandhi and Patel said about RSS. I will tell if they don’t want to read. Sardar Patel had said that RSS ideology is toxic and can destroy India’s soul,” Gandhi had said.
Reacting to these comments, Prasad said that the Nehru-Gandhi family deliberately tried to undo Patel’s legacy over the years.
“Sardar Patel died in 1950 while Maulana Azad passed away in 1958. After India became free Jawaharlal Nehru was the PM for 17 years, Indira Gandhi for 16 years and Rajeev Gandhi for five years.
During these 38 long years so many national leaders were given Bharat Ratna including Nehru and Indira Gandhi…It was a Congress PM from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, Narasimha Rao, who gave them (Patel and Azad) the Bharat Ratna,” he said.