Thiruvananthapuram/ New Delhi: Under attack from political parties, the RSS on Saturday dissociated itself from a controversial article published in its Malayalam mouthpiece that Nathuram Godse should have targeted Jawaharlal Nehru instead of Mahatma Gandhi as he was responsible for Partition.
The Congress, meanwhile, slammed the RSS and BJP for the “distasteful, malicious distortion of history” and demanded a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue.
“RSS strongly condemns the controversial article published in Kesari Malayalam journal in Kerala on October 17, 2014. The views published therein are exclusively that of the writer and the RSS has nothing to do with it,” RSS national prachar pramukh Manmohan Vaidya said in a statement, adding, “We, as a movement, not only dissociate ourselves from such views but also deplore them. RSS has always condemned any kind of violence in thought or action in the strongest possible words.”
The RSS statement came after criticism of an article written by Gopalakrishnan, a BJP candidate from Kerala in the recent Lok Sabha elections, in the latest issue of Kesari in which he had also said Nehru never had any genuine attachment to the Father of the Nation.
Terming the article written in the RSS mouthpiece in Malayalam Kesari as “barbaric and illegal”, Congress general secretary Ajay Maken asked Mr Modi and the BJP to immediately make their stand clear in this regard.
“Silence on their part would only point towards their complicity. The argument by the BJP leader that Godse should have killed Nehru instead of Mahatma Gandhi reaffirms that the basic tenets of their ideology are hatred and violence,” Mr Maken said.
“It is difficult to find this kind of perverse discourse anywhere except the darkest corner of a bankrupt mind that the RSS and BJP thrive upon,” said Mr Maken.
However, reacting to the charges, Kesari editor N.R. Madhu said this was a sheer distortion of facts by Congress leaders with political motives.
“This is not for the first time we are criticising Nehru’s policies and approaches to vital issues, including Partition. But nowhere has the article even remotely suggested that Nehru should have been physically targeted,” Madhu told agencies.
He said this was a ploy by Congress leaders to show that they were more vehement in opposing the RSS and the BJP than the CPI(M).
