Cong, RSS tussle to claim Pranab

The Congress and the RSS seem to be engaged in a tug- of- war over former President Pranab Mukherjee. While the Congress had rallied around Mr Mukherjee for “showing the mirror of truth to the RSS”, and invited him for the party’s official iftar, the Sangh mouthpiece Organiser has come up with a cover story interpreting his speech as a direct assault on Congress and the Gandhi clan.

In their bid to appropriate Mr Mukherjee, the mouthpiece also pointed out some “interesting omissions” in his speech.

“Apart from the word minority, some of the interesting omissions from the speech of Mr Mukherjee were the names Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Congress party itself.”

For the RSS mouthpiece, the former President also went against the Congress and the secular “cabal” while speaking about the minority community, particularly the Mughals.

It wrote that during his “candid” speech, Mr Mukherjee suggested that, “India was a State long before the concept of the European nationstate gained ground.” It then went on to point out that the “the- Left liberal secular media cabal led by Congress has been preaching that Mughals came to Bharat to teach how to cook biryani and British taught India how to bake cake.” and added: “He talked about

M a h a j a n a p a d a s , Chandragupta Maurya, victory over Greeks and other parts of Indian history which have been masked by left liberal secular media cabal.” It pointed out that Mr Mukherjee clearly “mentioned that Mughals were invaders and British were colonisers”.

According to the Organiser, Mr Mukherjee went against the Congress grain was also evident when he spoke about “Surendranath Banerjee, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, completely forgotten and disowned by Congress”.

While Mr Mukherjee had spoken elaborately about Jawaharlal Nehru’s conviction in secularism and pluralism, the mouthpiece claimed that “he ( Pranab Mukherjee) did not give credit to Nehru for unifying India..”

For the RSS mouthpiece, Mr Mukherjee tacitly dismissed Congress’ charge of economic paralysis under Mr Modi when he said, “We have done well on our economic growth indicators.” This statement for the Organiser was a clear “praise of PM Narendra Modi and BJP- led Central government”.

The RSS mouthpiece also hailed the former President for ending his speech with “Vande Mataram, an anathema to Congress party and Islamists in this country”.