New Delhi [India], June 27 : Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Hannan Mollah strongly criticised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Friday following a statement made by RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, accusing the organisation of attacking the Constitution and undermining democratic values in the country.
Speaking to ANI, Mollah said, "They are daily attacking the Indian Constitution. They are destroying its basic structure. Its federal character is under attack. Public civil rights are also under threat." He further accused the ruling government of using state machinery to suppress dissent and Opposition voices, comparing the situation to the Emergency era, but said that the current atmosphere was even more dangerous.
"The Opposition is being heavily suppressed by the government machinery, and every day, people are being gagged. They are maintaining an undeclared emergency, which is worse than the earlier emergency," Mollah told ANI.
Going a step further, the CPI(M) leader recalled past incidents, alleging hypocrisy on the part of the RSS leadership. "They wrote three letters to Indira Gandhi, requesting that their arrests be excused. This is their character. They have no right to speak such nonsense," he added.
His remark came after Dattatreya Hosabale questioned the legitimacy of including the terms "socialist" and "secular" in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution.
Earlier on Friday, Congress MP Pramod Tiwari also attacked Dattatreya Hosabale, alleging that his recent remarks reflected a "hidden agenda" to change the Constitution of India. Tiwari claimed the people had rejected this plan during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
He questioned whether the ruling ideology now intended to replace those values with the ideology of Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. "So, will Godse's principles be introduced after it is abolished? Will India's 140 crore people be denied the right to equality? Will a world be built only for the big players of capitalism?" he asked.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has never accepted the Constitution, attacking its framers from the beginning and criticised it for not being "inspired by Manusmriti," Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said today.
The Congress leader was replying to the comments made by RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale on Thursday, as the latter claimed that terms like "Socialist" and "Secular" were forcibly inserted into the Constitution -- a move that needs to be reconsidered now, while speaking at a programme on the 50th anniversary of the Emergency.