RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale on Saturday launched a veiled attack on Rahul Gandhi for not meeting the Sangh leaders despite claiming to open “mohabbat ki dukan” (shop of love) in “nafrat ke bazaar” (market of hate).

“Aap nafrat ke bazar me mohabbat ki dukan chalana chahate hain, par milna nahin chahte hai. Ham to sabse milna chahte hai (You want to run the shop of love in the market of hatred and you don’t want to meet us. But we want to meet everybody),” Hosabale said while suggesting that the RSS was spreading love but it was a mere rhetoric for Rahul.

The Sangh leader was addressing a news conference in Mathura on the last day of the four-day RSS meet on Saturday and responding to a question on whether they had developed some differences with the BJP before the 2024 parliamentary elections.

“We meet the leaders of every political party, every industrialist, every leader of different communities. We don’t have any tension with anybody, be it the BJP leaders, the Congress or those who represent other organisations. I don’t want to take names here because it would become different news,” said Hosabale, the second in command in the RSS after Mohan Bhagwat.

Rahul has in several of his speeches said that he was running a shop of love amid the religious hatred propagated by the RSS and the BJP. “I can never go to an RSS office even if you slit my throat,” the Congress leader had said in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, in January last year.

Hosabale said the RSS was driven by the motive of Hindu unity. “The Hindus would be targeted if they were divided in the name of caste, language and region. The history before us is that we were killed when we were divided,” said the RSS leader.