The Congress on Thursday cited excerpts from a book to claim that Mahatma Gandhi called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a "communal body with a totalitarian outlook".
In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said Pyarelal, who was one of Gandhi's closest aides, part of his personal staff for almost three decades, and became his secretary after the death of Mahadev Desai in 1942.
"Pyarelal's books on Mahatma Gandhi have become standard reference works. In 1956, he published the first volume of his book 'Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase'... brought out by Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad. It carried a long introduction by the President of India Dr. Rajendra Prasad, as well as an endorsement by the Vice President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan," Ramesh said.
"On page 440 of the second volume, Pyarelal writes of a conversation between Mahatma Gandhi and one of his colleagues in which the Father of the Nation describes the RSS as a 'communal body with a totalitarian outlook'," the Congress leader said, adding that this conversation took place on September 12, 1947.
Five months later, then Union home minister Sardar Patel banned the RSS, he said.
Thursday marks Gandhi Jayanti and also the centenary of the RSS.
Comparing the organisation to a river which had nurtured and nourished a civilisation of nationalists around it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday showered praise on the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) on the eve of its centenary.
After Modi hailed the RSS for its role in nation-building on Wednesday, the Congress reminded him that Patel said that the Sangh's activities created an atmosphere that led to the killing of Mahatma Gandhi.
PM Modi also released a commemorative stamp and coin symbolising Bharat Mata as an entity for the first time in independent India as well as a stamp acknowledging the Sangh’s association with the nation’s history – its cadres marching as part of the ceremonial parade on Republic Day in 1963.
Opposition parties called it an “insult to the Constitution”.
The Congress hit out at the PM for his statement that RSS leaders went to jail during the freedom struggle, claiming that RSS leaders had actually helped the British suppress the Quit India Movement.
“RSS, an organisation that divides the country… At the time of independence, its leaders neither went to jail nor were ever banned by the British,” said the Congress on Wednesday in a post on X.