While Rahul Gandhi faces flak for calling the RSS Gandhi’s killers, a similar verbal rages in Kerala, the state which has the highest number of RSS shakhas.
The fight over a minister's comment that RSS is running arms stores and shakhas in temples has become a bigger controversy with the Devasom board head countering the minister's statement.
Kerala Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran and Travancore Devaswom Board President Prayar Gopalakrishnan are in a tug of war that got worse on Tuesday and is showing no signs of dissipating.
Surendran said on Tuesday that he does not understand what devotion Prayar Gopalakrishnan sees in the RSS. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he says Nathuram Godse is a devotee,” Surendran wrote on Facebook.
Saying that Gopalakrishnan’s recent statements supporting the RSS came as a rude shock to him, Surendran asked whether the board president had forgotten history.
“It is understandable when RSS opposes my views. But it is not acceptable when Prayar makes such statements making RSS seem like a religious body,” Surendran said.
The fight began when Surendran claimed that the RSS was running arsenals in temples.
Gopalakrishnan countered this claim on September 2, saying: “After I assumed office, there have been no complaints in this regard. If there is a complaint, an inquiry will be carried out.”
Surendran, however, took the matter further, and accused Gopalakrishnan of supporting the RSS. In his Facebook post, he accused Gopalakrishnan of “ignoring RSS’s history of triggering communal violence in which many people lost their lives.”
He repeated his earlier comment that RSS was running arsenals in temples, inconveniencing devotees.