‘Desperate bid to curry favour with RSS leadership’: Congress on Modi’s article on Mohan Bhagwat

The Congress on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “over-the-top tribute” to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on his 75th birthday was a “desperate bid to curry favour” with the Hindutva organisation’s leadership.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, of which Modi is a member.

In an article published in several newspapers, Modi described Bhagwat as an “extraordinary” person who always put the nation first.

“Mohan ji is a living example of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, showing that when we rise above boundaries and consider everyone as our own, it strengthens trust, brotherhood and equality in society,” Modi wrote.

He also said that September 11 is significant for two global events: Swami Vivekananda’s “iconic Chicago address” in 1893 and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in the United States in 2001 that killed around 3,000 persons and injured more than 6,000 others.

Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh criticised Modi for omitting another milestone that fell on the same date, which was the “satyagraha” launched by MK Gandhi in South Africa’s Johannesburg in 1906.

“That was when the world first heard of this revolutionary idea,” Ramesh said. “Of course, it is too much to expect the PM to remember the origin of satyagraha since the very word satya is...

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