Who was hanged along with Godse for Mahatma’s murder? Cong poser to RSS

Congress on Wednesday posed two questions in its KnowYourLegacy series on its Twitter page in what a party leader described as bringing the true face of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) before the netizens.

The first question is: Which organisation opposed the acceptance of India Tricolour flag by saying “The word three is in itself an evil?” The four choices to vote were RSS, Hindu Mahasabha, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Another question is: “Which RSS member and coconspirator was hanged alongside Nathuram Godse for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi?”

The party provided answer to the second question, but not to the first and the party leaders said it was obvious. “Narayan Apte was hanged alongside Nathuram Gose for assassination of Mahatma Gandhi,” they said.

According to them, the VHP was set up by then RSS chief “Guruji” M S Golwalkar and S S Apte, popularly known as Dada Saheb in 1964 while the Bajrang Dal emerged as a militant wing of the VHP only in 1984 and so they did not exist when the Tricolour was adopted as India’s national flag.

It was the RSS that refused to fly the Tricolour and it used to mount its own flag until recently. The Hindu Mahasabha, which is also now a militant Hindu organisation, had no objection to the Tricolour as it was still under the influence of renowned educationist Madan Mohan Malviya, who founded the Baharas Hindu University, and nationalist Punjabi leader Lala Lajpat Rai in 1914, at least 11 years before the RSS was formed, they said.

Some Hindu Mahasabha leaders claim it was originally founded in 1882 in Lahore, three years before the Indian National Congress was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in December 1885.