A day after former Congress President Rahul Gandhi accepted that the Emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was a mistake and attacked the BJP-RSS for capturing institutions, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar today termed the comments made by Rahul as laughable.
Addressing a press conference, Javadekar said that Rahul claimed that institutions were not weakened during the Emergency. The union minister termed the statement laughable and added that then Indira Gandhi-led government had suppressed all organisations and MPs and MLAs were arrested. Javadekar reminded that almost all parties were banned and the newspapers were also shut down during the Emergency.
Terming the RSS as the biggest school of patriotism in the world, Javadekar said that Rahul Gandhi will take a lot of time to understand the Sangh.
Notably, Rahul has been attacking the BJP-RSS for allegedly destroying the institutional framework of the country. Last week, Rahul Gandhi had claimed that the concentration of capital has combined with the RSS to destroy the institutional balance in the country. He had alleged a systemic attack on elected institutions and the free press in the last six years by the BJP and the RSS.
Speaking during a webinar with India’s former chief economic advisor and renowned economist Kaushik Basu yesterday, Rahul admitted that the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi between 1975-1977 was a mistake. He had, however, defended Congress by saying that what happened during the Emergency was fundamentally different from what is happening under the Narendra Modi government. He claimed that Congress neither tried to capture the country’s institutional framework nor it has the power to do so as the party stood for constitutional values.
Rahul also claimed that the RSS is filling up the country’s institutions with its people and even if the BJP loses elections, the Congress won’t be getting rid of people linked to the RSS.
