In a no-holds-barred attack on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat for his remark that India got “true independence” after the Ram Temple in Ayodhya was consecrated, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today said the comment amounted to “treason” and that Mr Bhagwat would be arrested and tried if he was in any other country.

Mr Gandhi was addressing an event to mark the inauguration of the new Congress headquarters in Delhi. “We are getting a new headquarters at a very particular time. I think it’s quite symbolic that yesterday, the chief of the RSS said that India never achieved Independence in 1947. He said true Independence in India was achieved when the Ram Mandir was built. He says that the Constitution was not the symbol of our freedom.”

Mohan Bhagwat’s audacious comment that India didn’t gain true independence in 1947 is an insult to our freedom fighters, every single Indian citizen and an attack on our Constitution. pic.twitter.com/6sMhdxn3xA

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 15, 2025

“Mohan Bhagwat has the audacity to inform the nation every two or three days what he thinks about the Independence movement, what he thinks about the Constitution. What he has said yesterday is treason because it is stating that the Constitution is invalid, it is stating that everything (done) to fight against the British was invalid and he has the audacity to say this publicly,” Mr Gandhi said, adding, “in any other country, he would be arrested and tried”.

“To say that India did not get Independence in 1947 is an insult to every single Indian and it’s about time we stop listening to this nonsense that these people think they can just keep parroting out and shouting and screaming,” the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha said.

Mr Bhagwat was in Indore on Monday to present the National Devi Ahilya award to Champat Rai, general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. Addressing a gathering there, he said the day of the consecration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya should be celebrated as “Pratishtha Dwadashi” as it marks the “true independence” of Bharat. “India, which faced enemy attacks for centuries, witnessed its true independence that day. We had independence, but it had not been established. India got political independence on August 15, 1947, we also brought a Constitution but the country did not run in its spirit. How can we accept that dreams have been fulfilled and pain alleviated? Our swa (self) is Ram, Krishna and Shiva. Do they belong only to those who worship them? No. Ram connects people from north to south, Krishna from east to west and Shiva is in every particle of Bharat,” he said.

New Delhi:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath – a senior leader of the BJP – and Mohan Bhagwat, boss of ruling party’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are expected to meet this afternoon in Gorakhpur, which is the latter’s Assembly bastion.

The meeting – sources call it a “courtesy meet” as Mr Bhagwat is in the Chief Minister’s constituency for a RSS event, is to take place either between 2 and 4 pm or after the latter’s visit to the Gorakhnath Temple.

The optics of Mohan Bhagwat meeting Yogi Adityanath are significant after the former’s speech this week in Nagpur; Mr Bhagwat’s speech was peppered with criticism about the way the campaign was conducted on both sides of the political divide.

If the RSS chief’s comment was veiled, his colleague Indresh Kumar’s was not; he slammed the “party which did bhakti of Lord Ram (a reference to building the Ram Temple in UP’s Ayodhya, which was expected to seal a landslide win for the party) for its “arrogance”. 

The RSS, however, dispelled talk of a split with its political unit; sources said the message was just a pick-me-up for the BJP’s central leadership.

And as for Indresh Kumar’s jab, RSS sources distanced the organisation from the comments and sought to flip it, declaring Lord Ram “stopped those (the Congress-led INDIA bloc) who became arrogant” at 241.

For the 2024 Lok Sabha election the BJP had set itself an ambitious target of 370 seats (400+ with allies) to form a third consecutive union government with a brute majority.

However, hobbled by a strong showing by the INDIA group, and pushback over policy issues, the party’s previously formidable election-winning machinery managed only 240 seats – 32 below the majority mark – and was forced to rely on ‘kingmakers’ Nitish Kumar and N Chandrababu Naidu to complete its hat-trick.