India’s main opposition Congress party president Rahul Gandhi Monday targeted a right-wing organization leader for saying that his organization can mobilize its carders in three days while the army requires six to seven months to prepare for the war.
Gandhi said the remarks of Mohan Bhagwat, head of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has put a question mark on the ability of the Indian army and demanded an apology from RSS.
“The RSS chief’s speech is an insult to every Indian, because it disrespects those who have died for our nation. It is an insult to our flag because it insults every soldier who ever saluted it. Shame on you Bhagwat, for disrespecting our martyrs and our army,” Gandhi wrote on twitter.
While addressing party workers in Bihar state on Sunday, Bhagwat said RSS workers can be trained in three days to defend the country’s borders if the need arose.
“Ours is not a military organisation. But we have discipline like the military. If the country needs it and the Constitution permits, it takes six or seven months to prepare an army but RSS activists can get ready in three days and this is our capability,” Bhagwat said.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of Communist Party of India said Bhagwat’s comments were in “poor taste, against Constitutional propriety”.
“It confirms our worst fears about the Sangh (RSS) that it has no respect for India’s institutions. His statement exposes RSS’s hidden agenda to float parallel militias to wreak havoc, crush national unity,” Vijayan in a statement said.
RSS is considered as an ideological fountainhead of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
