Why Rahul Gandhi blaming RSS for killing Mahatma Gandhi is wrong

On Tuesday, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was unequivocally told by Supreme Court that he’d have to face trial in a defamation case for linking the RSS to Mahatma Gandhi’s death. The bench observed: “We have held it may be historically correct but the fact or the statement has to meet the test of public good. You can't make collective denunciation. Freedom is not crippled or curbed. What is curbed is defamatory speech. What the writers, politicians, critics or antagonists say, you must have great magnitude to swallow.”

The court also observed that Rahul made a speech quoting a ‘wrong historical fact’ and that the petitioner’s allegations fell under Section 499 (defamation) of the IPC. Understandably, Congress, is clinging on to the defence, ruling out the possibility of an apology and claimed Rahul Gandhi would ‘substantiate them with facts’.

Meanwhile, RSS’ Communications Department Head Manmohan Vaidya said: “The Congress had been consistently trying to spread lies and baseless allegations about RSS. Today's Supreme Court ruling has exposed the Congress. They (Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders) are avoiding the trial and are repeating the same false allegations against RSS. It seems he does not have faith in India's legal system and respect for it.”

 The alleged link between the organisation and Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination has become an albatross around its neck, an easy stick to beat them with, despite the organisation’s constant attempts to delink itself. Similar to Muslims being blindly blamed for acts of terrorism by mad men who may or may not be inspired by their religion, the Congress and others have for too long linked RSS to Gandhi's death. While, there are claims that Godse and his brothers (Gopal, Dattatreya and Govind) were all members of the RSS at the time of the assassination, investigators failed to find any direct link between RSS’ bureaucracy and the plot to murder the father of the nation. As far as the history books show, Nathuram Godse left RSS in the mid-30s.

Since then the RSS has often been forced to defend itself when other more fringe organisations like the Hindu Mahasabha, Hindu Sena, Maharana Pratap Batallion and Sanatan Sanstha celebrated Godse as a martyr and marking the day of his death as 'Shaurya Diwas. 

In fact, RSS' Vaidya had strongly condemned the celebration and said: "I don't know which organisation it is. But I am against honouring and giving respect to Nathuram Godse. He is a murderer. The fight of thoughts should be fought with thoughts only. It is not right to kill anyone as was done by Godse. Some people think that by doing so (killing Gandhi), they have encouraged Hindutva, but that is wrong. In fact, they have insulted Hindutva. I think it was an evil to kill Gandhi ji who was such a respected figure in India.”

In 2010, RSS’ Ram Madhav came out strongly against a book edited by current president Pranab Mukherjee which again linked the organisation to Gandhi’s murder. A case had also been filed against former Congress union minister Arjun Singh who had said that Mahatma’s murder was ‘the only achievement of the RSS’.

Let’s be clear about one thing, linking RSS to the death is an old political game, one that is lazy and conflates every right-wing Hindu organisation, political or apolitical including the RSS, Hindu Sena, Hindu Mahasabha, Sanatan Sanstha and the BJP into one, blaming them for a host of things, the biggest of which is Gandhi’s assassination. The RSS and the VHP are not the same organisation and neither is the BJP or the RSS. While the latter might be the breeding ground for its ideology they certainly don’t hold the same values.

Even if the RSS were guilty of ‘distributing sweets’, as India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel believed, that puts them in the same boat as some Muslims who are enamoured by the acts of terrorists who they feel are fighting the big bully USA. This however, doesn't make them responsible for the crime. 

In a letter to Nehru, while observing that the RSS wasn’t involved at all though he noted: “His assassination was welcomed by those of the RSS and the Mahasabha who were strongly opposed to his way of thinking...But beyond this, I do not think it is possible…to implicate any other members of the RSS or the Hindu Mahasabha. The RSS have other sins and crimes to answer for, but not this one.”

RSS has continually decried the link, there has never been any evidence to support the fact that they either masterminded it or helped the murderers. The RSS might have been ideological opponents of the Mahatma or even the Congress but that hardly makes them responsible for his death. The illogical leap in faith is just as bad as blaming Muslims across the world for the terrorist acts that are carried out by deranged people in the name of Islam including the ISIS and Al Qaeda.

That these terrorist organisations might or might not have some ideological values in common with Muslims hardly makes the latter responsible for the actions of mad men. Just like a foot-soldier from BJP  being accused of Mohammad Akhlaq’s death doesn’t mean the entire party is responsible. Rahul Gandhi and Congress’ desire to continually link the organisation – which has taken centre-stage since the BJP’s rise to power – to Gandhi’s death is lazy mud-slinging at its best and it is time the Congress thought of a better way to gain attention and figure out how it can remain important to the political narrative because any democracy, seeks to crumble when its main opposition party can’t figure out what to do. The RSS bogey has failed to scare the voters and will unlikely to do so in the future. The Supreme Court's observation is another sign to Rahul and the Congress to stop flogging a long dead horse.