NEW DELHI: Dismissing suggestions that he had made a U-turn on the RSS’ alleged role in the killing of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday insisted that he stood by “every single word” that he had said.
“I will never stop fighting the hateful & divisive agenda of the RSS. I stand by every single word I said,” he tweeted. On Wednesday he told the Supreme Court that he did not ever blame the RSS for the Gandhi assassination but had only said that a “few individuals in the organisation” were responsible for it.
And RSS ideologue M G Vaidya asked Rahul to apologise for his remarks. “If he now says the RSS was not involved, but the people involved in Gandhi’s murder were RSS affiliates, then he must come clean on his statement,” he said. “He is twisting it now. He must show his generosity by offering an apology for his statement and should accept before the court that what he had said was wrong,” the former RSS spokesperson said.
The BJP hit out at him, escalating the fight between the two parties. “Rahul’s face-saving verbal gymnastics after a surrender in Court on RSS won’t help. False bravado and bluster no substitutes to truth,” party spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said. “The truth is that the RSS has only grown in strength despite attempts by the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi to target it. It just shows Rahul Gandhi’s ideological bankruptcy and we do not take him seriously,” BJP leader Shrikant Sharma said. “Those living in glass houses should not throw stones at others. Will Rahul Gandhi be linked with the rape and murder of the Dalit woman Bhanwari Devi or the killing of Naina Sahni because those accused of these crimes were from the Congress?”he further said.
Earlier, after Rahul’s “U-turn” in the court, Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu said wisdom had prevailed upon him.