NEW DELHI: After the furore over
Pranab Mukherjee accepting an invitation for an RSS event, Congress leader
P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that the former President should attend the event and talk about the “wrong” in their ideology.
“Now that he has accepted invitation there is no point debating why he accepted it. The more important thing to say is, sir you have accepted the invitation, please go there and tell them what is wrong with their ideology,” the former finance minister was quoted saying by ANI.
A few days ago, Mukherjee ruffled a few feathers in the Congress camp by accepting an invitation to attend the convocation of RSS
pracharaks
scheduled to take place on June 7.
Party spokesman, Abhishek Singhvi, said, “Mukherjee left politics on assumption of the presidency. His speaking at any convocation is no indication of his beliefs. Judge him by what he says and what are his established beliefs in 50 years of his political life.”
Some who know Mukherjee said he was likely to speak to the RSS gathering on the “real sense” of nationalism — a discourse that could turn out to be a critique of the “exclusivist” view associated with the Hindutva camp.
Senior leader C K Jaffer Sharief shot off a letter to Mukherjee pleading that he call off his visit. Expressing “shock and dismay”, Sharief said, “I am unable to understand the compelling reasons.”
But Congress veteran H R Bharadwaj backed Mukherjee’s visit. Importantly, Mukherjee, the man behind the drafting of all resolutions at AICC plenary sessions, penned those accusing RSS of being involved in terror activities (Burari session) and also those slamming the outfit for assaulting the foundational principles of the republic with “communalism”.
“If RSS has invited a person with such views, does this mean that RSS admits that his (Mukherjee’s) views about the organisation were correct,” former Congress MP from Delhi Sandeep Dikshit asked.
