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Has Congress always been averse to RSS?

New Delhi: By triggering a debate on its Op-ed page last week, "The Hindu", possibly unintentionally, lifted the scab from an old wound for many of us.The debate, initiated by Vidya Subramaniam's column Oct 8,

Gurumurthy clinches the fact that the RSS violated no agreement, by quoting then Home Minister of Bombay, Morarji Desai, a Patel acolyte. In a written statement to the Bombay Legislative Assembly Sep 14, 1949, Desai admitted that the ban on the RSS was lifted “unconditionally”.

When, returning from Muzaffarnagar after last month's orchestrated, piecemeal ethnic cleansing, I heard exactly the anti Muslim slogans I had heard during the Gujarat riots in 1969, it did hurt.

On that occasion Badshah Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, put down anchor in that city for nearly a month because he could not believe what he saw - 512 killed in what Justice Jaganmohan Reddy called “largely one sided riots”.

Handbills calling for a “religious war” were distributed “to the rioters by the RSS and the Jana Sangh”. Congressmen joined the chorus that “Muslims were anti-national”. Yes, in 1969.