New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi came down heavily on the BJP and other right wing groups on Tuesday, alleging that that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was systematically penetrating country’s institutions.

In conversation with Kaushik Basu, professor in Cornell University in the US and India’s former chief economic advisor, Rahul alleged that the RSS is filling up India’s institutions with its people.

‘Emergency a mistake,’ admits Rahul

Terming the Emergency imposed by his grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as “wrong”, Rahul Gandhi said what is happening in India currently was “fundamentally different” from the Emergency.

“I think that (Emergency) was a mistake. Absolutely that was a mistake. There is a fundamental difference between what happened in the Emergency, which was wrong, and what is happening now. Congress party, at no point, attempted to capture India’s constitutional framework. Our design doesn’t allow us that. Even if we want to do it, we can’t,” Rahul Gandhi said.

LIVE: My interaction with Prof Kaushik Basu @Cornell University https://t.co/GfErZtSpW2

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 2, 2021

“Modern democracies function because there is an institutional balance in the countryinstitutions that operate independently. That independence is being attacked in India. There is one big mother institution called the RSS that is penetrating all institutions. There is not a single one that is not under attack and it is done systematically,” Rahul Gandhi alleged.

BJP slams Rahul over attack on RSS

BJP on Wednesday hit back at Rahul Gandhi for attacking the RSS and claiming that the Congress at no point during the Emergency attempted to capture India”s institutional framework, saying his statement was “laughable” as his party had then ended the independence of institutions, denied media freedom and jailed dissenting voices.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar said it will take Gandhi a long time to understand Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindutva organisation and ideological fountainhead of the ruling BJP, and asserted that it is the “world”s biggest school of patriotism”.

Attacking the Congress leader, Javadekar said lakhs of people, including MPs and MLAs, were arrested during that time while institutions were denied any freedom.

Now for him to say that they did not target institutions is laughable, Javadekar said.