Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia’s remark that the Congress is pursuing the ideology of a traitor has triggered a verbal duel with party communications chief Jairam Ramesh, who has questioned the royal heir’s character and legacy.

Scindia, who had left the Congress for the BJP and engineered a defection by MLAs that pulled down the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh in 2020, had on Wednesday said: “The Congress has been now left with only one ideology, which is of a traitor, an ideology which works against the country.”

The scion of the erstwhile Gwalior royal family had also accused the Congress of insulting the backward classes.

Scindia had further charged Rahul Gandhi with creating a political circus over his personal legal battle in a defamation case.

Scindia had once been a close friend of Rahul and a trenchant critic of the Sangh parivar’s divisive politics and negative role in the freedom movement. His late father Madhavrao Scindia was a Congress Union minister.

His latest comments provoked Ramesh to tweet: “Both Ghulam Nabi Azad & Jyotiraditya Scindia have been huge beneficiaries of the Congress system & its leadership. With every passing day, they give powerful evidence that this generosity to them was undeserved. They reveal their true character which they kept hidden for so long.”

Scindia responded: “Munh mein Ram, bagal mein chhuri (Ram on the lips while carrying a hidden knife). Such statements of yours clearly show how much dignity and ideology are left in the Congress. You are anyway committed to yourself; your politics survives like this. Me and my family have always been responsible to the people.”

Ramesh retweeted a post by journalist Sujata Anandan, who writes for the National Herald, that said: “What the BJP does to decent human beings! When I wrote on Tushar Gandhi’s book ‘Let’s Kill Gandhi’ based on the Kapur Commission report, he named the Maharajah of Scindia (this man’s grandfather) as conspiring with the RSS to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi.

“There were four other Maharajahs involved but the gun provided to Godse that pumped the three bullets into Gandhiji belonged to the Gwalior Maharajah’s aide-de-camp.”

She added: “That interview almost did not get carried because the Nehru-Gandhi family felt whatever Madhavrao Scindia’s father’s involvement, he (Madhavrao) had been a true Congress leader and we must now not embarrass his family just because his son had now deserted the party and joined hands with BJP....”

Ramesh commented on this post: “Has he forgotten Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s immortal poem on the Rani of Jhansi? Angrezon ke mitr Scindia ne chhodi Rajdhani thi/ Bundele Harbolon ke munh hamne suni kahani thi/ Khoob ladi mardani wah to Jhansi wali rani thi.”

The poem lauds the Rani of Jhansi’s valiant fight against the British while describing Scindia as a British ally who had fled his capital.