RSS planted the idea of demonetisation: Rahul

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The RSS is trying to change the nature of India. Other parties haven’t tried to capture India’s institutions. RSS’s idea is similar to the idea of Muslim Brotherhood. RAHUL GANDHI, Congress president

LONDON: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday compared the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamist organisation of the Arab world, and alleged the RSS wants to change the fundamental nature of India -comments that the BJP condemned.

Gandhi made the remarks in the course of a series of interactive events with audiences that included policy experts, diplomats, scholars and British MPs. He said bad economic policy ideas such as demonetisation came from the RSS. A “formidable alliance” was being stitched to ensure the defeat of the BJP in the 2019 elections, Gandhi said.

“The RSS is trying to change the nature of India. Other parties haven’t tried to capture India’s institutions,” Gandhi said at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), a Londonbased think-tank.

“The RSS’s idea is similar to the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world,” he said.

“We are fighting against attempts to impose rigid, hate-fuelled angry ideology of the RSS in the country, its attempts to capture and destroy institutions nur- tured and developed over 70 years. There is a sustained attack on the weak,” he added.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is the oldest Islamist political group in the Arab world but several countries do not allow it to operate as a political party. Mohamed Badie, its leader, is currently in prison and it has been labelled a terror organisation by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Gandhi targeted the RSS for the second time in as many days.

On Thursday, addressing the Indian diaspora at an event in Berlin, he said the Congress binds together the people of India while the BJP and RSS divides them and spreads hatred.

Hitting back, BJP spokesman Sambit Patra demanded Gandhi to apologies to 125 crore Indians and stop his job of acting as a “contract killer for the idea of India”.