New DelhiDecember 28, 2025 09:27 PM IST
First published on: Dec 28, 2025 at 09:25 PM IST
A day after veteran Congress leader Digvijaya Singh praised the organisational strength of the BJP and the RSS, the Congress’s Lok Sabha whip Manickam Tagore on Sunday kicked off a fresh row by saying the Sangh was an organisation “built on hatred” and compared it to al-Qaeda.
“The RSS is an organisation built on hatred, and it spreads hatred. There is nothing to learn from hatred. Can you learn anything from al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda is an organisation of hatred. It hates others. What is there to learn from that organisation? If you want to learn, learn from good people. There is the Congress, which is 140 years old. The Congress brought people together. Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Congress into a people’s movement. Should this organisation learn from those organisations of hatred?” Tagore said on the sidelines of the party’s Foundation Day event in New Delhi.
Even as the Congress officially did not weigh in on the remarks and the BJP targeted him, Tagore stood his ground, telling The Indian Express, “The RSS is an organisation which is based on hate, breeds hate, and propagates hate. You can’t compare the Congress with it. Even al-Qaeda is an organisation that was formed on hate and breeds terror. We need to understand that the Congress structure is completely different. The Congress organisation is people-based. It is a love-based, relation-based organisation. It’s a justice-based organisation. The RSS and the Congress cannot be compared.”
Tagore’s comments came on a day when the party’s Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor backed Digvijaya Singh, saying the party organisation should be strengthened. “The organisation should be strengthened, there is no doubt,” said Tharoor, who himself has had differences with the party leadership over the past few months.
The statements backing Digvijaya — the former Madhya Pradesh CM heaped praise on the organisational strength of the BJP and the RSS and the rise of Narendra Modi from an ordinary party worker to Prime Minister, and followed it by calling for “decentralisation” of power within the Congress and the “need for strengthening” its own organisational structure — came despite the party officially refusing to wade into the controversy. The leadership made this apparent on Saturday after both Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi refused to comment on Singh’s remarks during the press conference held following the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting.
“Some of our MPs spoke to the press. But it was at Foundation Day events. The party feels this is an internal matter and it will be dealt with in the party. The media and the BJP can make it a big issue, but the feeling within the party is that it is being blown out of proportion. There is no question of the party officially engaging on this issue for now,” said a senior Congress leader.
The BJP hit out at the Congress over Tagore’s remarks, with its national spokesperson Pradeep Bhadari saying that the Opposition party had a “track record of vilifying nationalist organisations”.
“The RSS has been running schools, disaster-relief operations, blood donation camps, tribal welfare programmes, and social service initiatives across India for decades. The Congress’s track record of a soft corner for Pakistan-sponsored terror narratives, while nationalist organisations are vilified. Figures such as Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of 26/11, were once dismissed as ‘non-state actors’ by Congress leaders,” Bhandari said.
He said Digvijaya Singh had once termed the 26/11 attack in Mumbai as an “RSS conspiracy”. “This is the same Congress ecosystem that had questioned surgical strikes, cast doubts on the Indian Army, and repeated Pakistan’s talking points … The Congress and Pakistan run the same agenda.”