RSS stopped me from entering temple in Assam, says Rahul
NEW DELHI/GUWAHATI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said on Monday that he was stopped from entering a Vaishanvite monastery in Barpeta by RSS workers during a recent visit to Assam.
“When I went to Assam I wanted to visit a temple in Barpeta district. And at the temple, the RSS people there stopped me from entering the temple. This is the way the BJP operates,” he told reporters in the Parliament House complex.
The Congress vice-president led a protest by party MPS near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Parliament House complex on various issues on Monday, including the Barpeta temple controversy.
“They made the women there stand in front of me and told me that I cannot enter the temple. Who are they to stop me?” he asked.
Gandhi, who was in Barpeta on Friday, said he visited the monastery later in the evening when the suspected RSS workers had left the place. He said this style of politics was “unacceptable” to the people of the country.
However, the BJP termed the allegations as “fabricated” and said the RSS does not run temples. Without naming anyone, Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu said “spreading wrong messages and to mislead people has become the habit”.
His colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi alleged that Gandhi had become a “lying machine” and was resorting to such non-issues to disrupt Parliament.
Even as the monastery denied it was pressured by the RSS, chief minister Tarun Gogoi ordered a probe into the incident.
“While concluding a padyatra, Rahul entered the satra to pay his respects and seek bless ings... It was a conspiracy by RSS, which has infiltrated into satras also,” Gogoi said.
An RSS spokesperson in Guwahati said the Congress was trying to communalise a non-issue with an eye on the upcoming state polls. “Gandhi did enter the tem ple without any hindrance, so this appears to have been an afterthought. Gogoi created this controversy with elections in mind,” he said.
Monastery head Basistha Sarma said the inmates had actually planned a grand wel come for the Congress leader.