Parties across the political spectrum staked claim to the legacy of independent India's first deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, on his 150th birth anniversary on Friday.
At a media conference to mark the occasion, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said: "The Central Civil Services Conduct Rules of 1964 prohibited government employees from associating with political organisations like the RSS and the Jamaat-e-Islami…. It was imposed during the time of Vallabhbhai Patel…. And on July 9, 2024, the Modi government lifted this 58-year-old ban."
When asked if he wanted a ban on the RSS, the ideological fountainhead of the BJP, Kharge replied: "This is my personal opinion, and I will say it openly. It (the ban) should be implemented because these are the things that Vallabhbhai Patel put before us, and if the PM and (home minister Amit) Shah give it due respect, then it should happen.
"Because whatever disturbances are happening in the country today, and whatever law and order problems are being created in the country, it’s all because of the BJP and RSS," he said.
Kharge read out letters of Patel in which he noted the "joy expressed and the sweets distributed by RSS members on the death of Gandhiji" and that "the speeches of the leading figures of the Sangh are full of the poison of communalism".
"Recently, excerpts related to Gandhi, Godse and the RSS, as well as the 2002 Gujarat riots, have been removed from three NCERT textbooks…. And they have attempted to erase these facts, and they always keep doing this to transform lies into truth.
"Our country’s Prime Minister is an expert at this….. And the ban that Sardar Patel imposed on the RSS was to protect the secular and democratic nature of India," Kharge said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked Patel to link him with Kashmir.
In his speech at the Rashtriya Ekta Divas celebrations at Patel’s Statue of Unity near Gujarat’s Kevadia, Modi said: "Friends, Sardar Patel placed the sovereignty of the country above everything else. But unfortunately, in the years following Sardar Patel’s death, the governments of that time did not show the same seriousness regarding the country’s sovereignty….
"Sardar Patel wanted, just as he had integrated the other princely states, for the entire Kashmir to be integrated. But Nehru did not allow his wish to be fulfilled. Kashmir was divided with a separate Constitution and a separate flag," he said. Patel’s descendants also attended the event.
In 2019, after Jammu and Kashmir's special status was scrapped, historian Srinath Raghavan had told The Telegraph that the first meeting on the drafting of Article 370 took place on May 15 and 16, 1949, at Patel’s residence in Nehru’s presence.
When minister N.G. Ayyangar, who carried out the negotiations with then Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah, prepared a draft letter from Nehru to Abdullah summarising the contours of the agreement, he sent it to Patel with a note: "Will you kindly let Jawaharlalji know directly as to your approval of it? He will issue the letter to Sheikh Abdullah only after receiving your approval."
Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, too, demanded a ban on the RSS. He told reporters in Lucknow: "The BJP should remember that its parent party, that organisation was banned by Sardar Patel, and today the need is that someone become a Sardar Patel in this country and ban this ideology again."
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said: "Be it Covid, earthquake, flood, or any disaster, it’s Sangh volunteers who extend help. Many tall leaders have commended the RSS for its work. Mahatma Gandhi once said he was surprised by the discipline and absence of untouchability in the RSS camp, and Dr B.R. Ambedkar too appreciated that there was no difference between upper and lower castes there."
