TMC joins Cong to slam ‘violent’ RSS after VP’s praise
Times of India | 2 August 2024
Kolkata/New Delhi: Trinamool Congress on Thursday joined Congress in speaking out against RSS, a day after Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar praised the organisation in the House. TMC backed Congress’s allegations that RSS had a long history of “corroding the sovereignty and integrity of India” and was an “anathema” to the country’s first home minister Sardar Vallab-hbhai Patel.TMC added that the BJP brass was “trying to outdo RSS’s Golwalkar”.
Vice-President Dhankhar defended RSS on Wednesday, saying it had “unimpeachable credentials” and was doing “national service” as he took umbrage at remarks by Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X on Thursday, said the man who would have been horrified by the “clean chits and certificates of appreciation” being awarded to RSS was ‘Iron Man of India’ Patel himself. Multiple documents from his tenure as the home minister revealed his profound horror at RSS’s “violent, anti-Constitutional and anti-national character”, Ramesh said.
Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien shared Ramesh’s post on X and attached an article he wrote on RSS that was published in April. O’Brien had alleged that RSS imparted paramilitary training and detailed its role in the Indian freedom struggle. The MP also referred to the fact that post-Independence, RSS has been banned thrice by Centre. The first instance was in 1948 following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. “While banning the RSS, Sardar Patel said, ‘It has been found that in several parts of the country, individual members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition’,” O’Brien wrote.