Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, on Friday refused to apologise or retract his statement terming the RSS a “cancer to the soul of the nation”, and vowed to “expose the traitors”.
Gandhi had courted controversy at the unveiling of a statue of the late Gandhian P. Gopinathan Nair at Neyyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday by referring to the BJP and the RSS as “dangerous and insidious enemies” who have entered Kerala.
“We will be able to defeat the BJP, but the RSS is a poison. They are trying to destroy the soul of the country. The soul of the nation is afflicted with cancer and the Sangh Parivar is spreading it. We should be fearful about that because if the soul is lost, everything is lost,” Gandhi had said. BJP-RSS workers had protested his remark by blocking his car and shouting slogans.
Speaking at an event at the Union Christian College in Aluva, Ernakulam, on Friday, Gandhi decided to take the Sangh Parivar head on.
“I have decided to continue to expose the traitors. They wanted me to apologise for what I said. They wanted me to retract my statement. I told them that I don’t do that. When I say these things, I don’t want to apologise or retract my statements. I can say that this incident has only strengthened my resolve to continue to expose the traitors. Because this is a fight which is more essential than the freedom struggle. Now, we have a common enemy which must be exposed,” he said.
Gandhi expressed shock at the way his car was blocked and said it didn’t sit well with the political culture of Kerala where “the rights of people are still protected”.
“We have lived side by side with the Opposition. We never tried to silence each other. We have to protect the soul of Kerala and the spirit of the Malayalis. It is very essential that these kinds of poisonous people must be pushed out of Kerala,” he said.
On Friday, the BJP organised a protest against Gandhi at Neyyattinkara.
Expressing apprehension on X, Gandhi wrote: “Descendants of Bapu’s murderers, RSS, are congregating at his statue in Neyyattinkara today. I wonder, will they fire shots at his statue?”
