Test for ‘love guru’ Rahul
RSS opens its arms, will Congress boss take the bait?
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘hug diplomacy’ is on test: his harshest critic, the RSS, is considering inviting him to a lecture series, which will be held between September 17 and 19 at Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi.
At test will be Rahul’s dictum that his party harbours no rancour towards any one; and to prove that he practices what he preaches, Gandhi had gathered PM Narendra Modi in his arms in Parliament in July. The overwhelming hug momentarily caught the BJP off guard but the RSS has found in the ‘invite’ the perfect riposte to Gandhi’s ‘‘love guru’’ avatar.
The invite will come on the heels of Gandhi taking the RSS head on and likening it to the Islamic radical outfit Muslim Brotherhood.
Apart from the Congress president, several other opposition leaders like Sitaram Yechury of the Left are also likely to be invited. The big idea is to bring different ideologies on a single platform for the event; at least, this is the explanation that the RSS is putting forth for shedding its traditional coyness.
The star speaker at the ‘meeting point’ of ideologies will be RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who will lecture Rahul Ganshi and others on the ‘Future of Bharat: An RSS perspective.’ Asked about the ‘invite’ to Rahul Gandhi, RSS activist Arun Kumar replied: "It is our prerogative to decide whom to invite. Leave this to us... But people from all walks of life, including from different political outfits, ideologies and religions, will be invited."
It is understood that the Congress will issue a statement only after it receives a formal invitation from the RSS. The Congress also wants to look at the language used in the invitation before making any public acknowledgements, a media report said.
In June this year, Congress veteran and former president Pranab Mukherjee attended an event at the RSS headquarters in Nagpur on the Sangh's invitation, for which he was put in the pillory by the party leaders. RSS emerged unscathed from the controversy; in fact, it was able to successfully project that it is no longer a ‘political untouchable’.
The ‘provocation’ for the invite came last week at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, where Rahul Gandhi had said the RSS was trying to "change" the nature of India and "capture" its institutions. If Rahul merely offers his regrets and refuses to accept the invite, he will be lampooned for his pretentious ‘hug;’ and, if he decides to tread into the RSS lair, he will give it a political legitimacy that the Sangh has pined for since Independence.
The Rahul ‘outreach’ is also an extension of the RSS gambit to play a larger political role, say observers. The Sangh is apparently not content with its self-proclaimed role as a ‘cultural organisation.’ That means the distinction between the RSS and the BJP is getting blurred by the day.