‘Totalitarian outlook’: Cong quotes Gandhi to chide ‘communal’ RSS

New Delhi: In a scathing attack on the RSS on its 100th anniversary, the Congress on Thursday cited excerpts from a book to claim that Mahatma Gandhi described the Sangh as a “communal body with a totalitarian outlook”.

The opposition party also cited a media report from 1948 that quoted a speech of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at a Congress session in Jaipur in which he vehemently criticised the RSS.

In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said Pyarelal was one of Gandhi’s closest aides, being part of his personal staff for almost three decades, and became his secretary after the death of Mahadev Desai in 1942.

“Pyarelal’s books on Mahatma Gandhi have become standard reference works. In 1956, he published the first volume of his book ‘Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase’... brought out by Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad. It carried a long introduction by the President of India Dr. Rajendra Prasad, as well as an endorsement by the Vice President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan,” Ramesh said.

The second volume appeared two years later, he said. “On page 440 of the second volume, Pyarelal writes of a conversation between Mahatma Gandhi and one of his colleagues in which the Father of the Nation describes the RSS as a ‘communal body with a totalitarian outlook’,” the Congress leader said, adding that this conversation took place on September 12, 1947.

Five months later, then Union home minister Sardar Patel banned the RSS, he said.

Ramesh also shared a screenshot of the passage from the book which states that Gandhi characterised the RSS as a “communal body with a totalitarian outlook”.

In another post, Ramesh said that on December 16, 1948, Patel spoke at the Congress session in Jaipur. He also shared a media report that was published the next day quoting Patel.

“Sardar Patel was referring to the steps which the Government had taken against the RSS. He said that the RSS organisation, which operated secretly, was supposed to safeguard Hindu culture.

“There was a challenge to the national flag which had come to be respected by kings and rulers, and the power that ruled over India for 200 years. It was under that flag that the Congress made great sacrifices and today under no circumstances would they give up the ideal for which they lived and worked,” the

report quoted.