'What you said is unforgivable': BJP tears into Rahul Gandhi for comments on RSS, says he should apologise

For the second time on Friday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched a scathing attack on Congress president Rahul Gandhi over his comments in Hamburg, Germany. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asked Rahul if he had taken supari to attack Indian culture and said that he should apologise for his comments. Rahul, in his address , while referring to the dearth of jobs for minorities, had cited the example of Islamic State, and argued that the exclusion of a large number of people from the development process could lead to the creation of insurgent groups anywhere in the world. The Congress president also compared the RSS to the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world. Responding to this, Patra said, “What you (Rahul) have said is unforgivable…The headlines of newspapers in Pakistan tomorrow will say that India is ruled by a government which is akin to the Muslim Brotherhood.” [caption id=“attachment_5039761” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra during a press conference on Friday. Image courtesy: Twitter/@BJP4India[/caption] He further said, “Is a terrorist organisation ruling in India at present? Have the people of India voted for a terrorist organisation?…Jawaharlal Nehru had invited the RSS at a Republic Day event when he was the prime minister. Was it a terror organisation then?” Patra also took a dig at photos of the Congress president put out recently on Twitter in a post which read, “The many facets of Rahul Gandhi.” The BJP spokesperson said, “You (Rahul) get photos of yourself clicked, in which you are looking in all directions. Why don’t you look at the work that RSS cadres are doing in flood-hit Kerala? Are the people who are carrying out this relief work terrorists?” The BJP spokesperson said that the Congress president has ’no maturity and understanding of India’ and added, “The only quality you possess is hatred for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP.” The Congress president on Friday repeated his comparison of the RSS with the Muslim Brotherhood, this time in the UK. The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest political Islamist group in the Arab world. It is not allowed to operate as an official political party in some Arab countries. Addressing the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, Gandhi accused the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) of trying to change the nature of India and capture India’s institutions. “The RSS is trying to change the nature of India. Other parties haven’t tried to capture India’s institutions,” he said. With inputs from PTI