RSS disowns Kesari article after Congress criticism

The RSS Saturday dissociated itself from a controversial article published in its Malayalam mouthpiece that Nathuram Godse should have targeted Jawaharlal Nehru instead of Mahatma Gandhi as he was responsible for the Partition, a view that came under attack from political parties.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Saturday dissociated itself from a controversial article published in its Malayalam mouthpiece that Nathuram Godse should have targeted Jawaharlal Nehru instead of Mahatma Gandhi as he was responsible for the Partition, a view that came under attack from political parties.

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“RSS strongly condemns the controversial article published in ‘Kesari’ Malayalam journal in Kerala on October 17, 2014. The views published therein are exclusively that of the writer and the RSS has nothing to do with it,” RSS’s national prachar pramukh Manmohan Vaidya said in a statement, adding that the RSS has always condemned any kind of violence in thought or action

The article, written by B Gopalakrishnan, a BJP candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections in Kerala, also said Nehru never had any genuine attachment with the Father of the Nation.

The Congress Saturday criticised the RSS and the BJP for their alleged “distasteful, malicious distortion of history” and demanded a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the article. Terming the article “barbaric and illegal”, Congress general secretary Ajay Maken asked the BJP to immediately make their stand clear in this regard.

“Is it the beginning of rewriting Indian History? BJP/RSS and Modi must come out with a categorical Statement on this. I know they won’t,” Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said in a tweet, adding that the article “reflects hardcore RSS ideology” and that he “strongly” condemns it.

The editor of the weekly has stood by the article but stoutly refuted Congress’s allegations.