The Congress inaugurated its new headquarters in Delhi on Wednesday with a fusillade against the RSS and its chief Mohan Bhagwat for suggesting India had secured “true independence” on January 22 last year with the consecration of the Ram temple
in Ayodhya.
Rahul Gandhi led the charge, alleging India’s rulers wanted the country run by a “shady, hidden, secret society” and asserting that the Congress alone had the ideological strength and will to fight the RSS-BJP.
He said the battle against the RSS-BJP was not just a political one. “The BJP and the RSS have captured every single institution of our country. We are now fighting the BJP, the RSS and the Indian State itself,” he said.
The BJP latched on to the remark about “fighting… the Indian State” and cited this as evidence of the Congress’s “links with Urban Naxals and the Deep State who want to defame, demean and discredit India”.
Rahul contended that what Bhagwat had said was “treason because it is stating that the Constitution is invalid, it is stating that the fight against the British is invalid — and he has the audacity to say this publicly. In any other country he would be arrested and tried.”
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the RSS and Bhagwat could make such claims because they had made no contribution to, no sacrifices for, Independence.
Bhagwat had on Tuesday said: “The true independence of India, which faced centuries of parachakra (enemy attack), was established on that day (the day the Ram temple was consecrated).”
He had added: “India had secured independence but it was not established…. India got freedom on August 15. We got political independence. We made a Constitution too… but the country was not run according to the spirit of that document (Constitution).”
Rahul said: “The Constitution — the fruit of the freedom movement — was essentially attacked by Mr Mohan Bhagwat yesterday when he said that the Constitution was not the symbol of our freedom.”
He argued that India was witnessing a battle between the ideas of the Constitution and the RSS.
“One idea says India is a Union of States…. There is no superior language… there is no superior culture… there is no superior community… On the other side there is the idea of a centralised knowledge, of a centralised understanding,” he said.
“Mohan Bhagwat has the audacity to inform the nation every two or three days what he thinks about the independence movement, what he thinks about the Constitution…. It is about time that we stop listening to this nonsense that these people think they can just keep parroting out, and shouting and screaming.”
Rahul also referred to the Sangh’s earlier reservations about the Tricolour.
“The people who are in power today do not salute the Tricolour, do not believe in the national flag, do not believe in the Constitution. They have a completely different vision of India than we do. They want India to be run by a shady, hidden, secret society,” he said.
In a post on X, BJP president J.P. Nadda said: “Hidden no more, Congress’ ugly truth now stands exposed by their own leader. I ‘compliment’ Mr Rahul Gandhi for saying clearly what the nation knows – that he is fighting the Indian state!
“It is not a secret that Mr Gandhi and his ecosystem have close links with Urban Naxals and the Deep State who want to defame, demean and discredit India.... Everything he has done or said has been in the direction of breaking India and dividing our society.”
The Congress is getting a new address after 47 years, having been headquartered at 24 Akbar Road since 1978 after a split forced Indira Gandhi to move her group’s office to this bungalow, allotted to one of her loyal MPs.
Congress sources said there was no plan to give up 24 Akbar Road. They cited how the BJP continued to occupy 11 Ashoka Road despite having shifted its headquarters in February 2018.
A small pathway that connects 24 Akbar Road and 10 Janpath — Sonia Gandhi’s residence since 1990 — allowed the Gandhis direct access to the party office.
For long associated with the Congress, 24 Akbar Road has seen the party more out of power than in. It had had a brush with fame even before its Congress association, though, when it was home to a young Aung San Suu Kyi in the early 1960s when her mother was appointed Burma’s (now Myanmar) ambassador to India.