Congress, Sangh engage in tug of war over Pranab Mukherjee

New Delhi: A tug of war seems to be waging between Congress and the Sangh over the former President Pranab Mukherjee. While the Congress had rallied around Mr Mukherjee for "showing mirror of truth to RSS," and invited him for the Iftaar Party, the Sangh mouthpiece, "Organiser" has come up with a cover story interpreting his speech as a direct assault on the Congress and the Gandhi clan. 

In their bid to appropriate Mr Mukherjee, the mouthpiece also pointed out some "interesting omission" in his speech. "Apart from the word 'minorityism', the interesting omissions from the speech of Mukherjee were the names Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Congress party itself." 

For the RSS mouthpiece, the former President also went against the Congress and the secular "cabal" while speaking about the minority community, particularly the Mughals. 

According to the "Organiser". that Mr Mukherjee went against the Congress grain  when he spoke about; "Surendranath Banerjee, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, all completely forgotten and disowned by Congress."

"Apart from the word minority some of the interesting omissions from the speech of Mr Mukherjee were the names Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party itself,” it said. 

For the RSS mouthpiece, the former President also went against the Congress and the secular "cabal" while speaking about the minority community, particularly the Mughals. It wrote that during his "candid" speech, Mr Mukherjee suggested that "India was a State long before the concept of the European nation-state gained ground". It then went on to point out that the "the-Left liberal secular media cabal led by the Congress has been preaching that the Mughals came to Bharat to teach how to cook biryani and the British taught us to bake cake", and added, "he talked about Mahajanapadas, Chandragupta Maurya victory over the Greeks and other parts of Indian history which have been masked by left liberal secular media cabal."

While Mr Mukherjee had spoken elaborately about Jawaharlal Nehru's conviction in secularism and pluralism, the mouthpiece claimed that "he (Pranab Mukherjee) did not give credit to Nehru for unifying India".

For the RSS mouthpiece, Mr Mukherjee tactfully dismissed the Congress' charge of economic paralysis under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it became clear when the former President "pointed out to the Congress party which was objecting openly to his participation in an RSS event....We have done well on our economic growth indicators." This statement was a clear "praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP-led Central Government," the RSS mouthpiece said.