On Monday (February 6), Congress scion Rahul Gandhi drew false equivalence between the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Islamist terror outfit Muslim Brotherhood in his latest attempt to malign India on the world stage.
He made the contentious claims during an interaction with a London-based think tank named Chatham House. Rahul Gandhi claimed, “The nature of the democratic contest in India has completely changed…”
“And the reason for the change is one organisation called the RSS – a fundamentalist, fascist organisation that has captured pretty much all of India’s institutions,” he alleged.
The Congress scion said, “RSS is a secret society. It’s built along the lines of the Muslim Brotherhood and the idea is to use the democratic contest to come to power and then subvert the democratic contest afterwards.”
He further insinuated, “It shocked me how successful they have been at capturing the different institutions of our country. The Press, Judiciary, Parliament, and Election Commission are all under threat and are controlled in one way or the other.”
Rahul Gandhi made similar analogies in 2018
5 years ago, the Congress leader made similar outlandish claims about the RSS during an interactive session in London with the think tank, International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Rahul Gandhi claimed then, “An organisation called the RSS is trying to change the nature of India. There is no other organisation in India that wants to capture India’s institutions. And what we are dealing with is a completely new idea. It is an old idea which is reborn.
“It (RSS) is similar to the idea that exists in the Arab world with the Muslim Brotherhood…And the idea is that one ideology should run through every single institution. One idea should crush all other ideas,” he attributed his preconceived notions to the Hindu organisation in 2018.
Comparison made between RSS and the Muslim Brotherhood is fictitious
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist terror outfit, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. It is infamous for promoting political Islam, Sharia law, violence and terrorism.
As such, it comes as no wonder that the organisation has been banned even in Muslim-majority Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is perceived as a threat to secularism and democratic values, and international security. The Islamist outfit’s offshoot in Egypt, known as the “Jamaat al-Islamiyya,” was responsible for the killing of 62 foreign tourists in Luxor in 1997.
While terror groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas make headlines for their brutal attacks on civilians, it is actually the Muslim Brotherhood that spreads anti-American sentiments to its members.
The Muslim Brotherhood employs al-Azhar University in Cairo as a means of indoctrinating its members in radical Islamism. Young men who have not yet been radicalized enter al-Azhar for a formal education, only to graduate with a degree in the extremist ideology.
Al-Azhar University and its long-standing ideological program, which is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, have produced numerous terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and ISIS.
On the contrary, the RSS is a cultural organisation rooted in Indian nationalism. It is focused on putting society before oneself and facilitating social cohesion under the common identity of being a ‘Bharatiya.’
Far from terrorism, it is involved in relief work in cases of natural disasters and catastrophes. The organisation also has a minority wing ‘Mulsim Rashtriya Manch’ to cater to the needs of the community. RSS believes that all Indians are Hindus by virtue of their common ancestry and association with ‘Hindustan.’
Unlike Muslim Brotherhood, RSS is not interested to create a ‘Hindu Ummah’ and is rather focused on putting India’s cultural and nationalist stance above its own.
Rahul Gandhi had been trying to demonise the organisation for a long time, often drawing outlandish comparisons with Islamist terror outfits. Interestingly, he has never criticised the Muslim Brotherhood in as many words as he does for RSS (perhaps to not upset and antagonise core voter base).
