3 min readThiruvananthapuramMar 14, 2025 10:23 PM IST
First published on: Mar 14, 2025 at 04:15 PM IST
Undeterred by the protest that his remarks on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh evoked, Mahatma Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi said Friday that the incident had strengthened his resolve to “continue to expose the traitors”.
“They wanted me to apologise for what I said,” Tushar said Friday at a function marking the centenary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to the Union Christian College in Aluva near Kochi. He was referring to his remarks from earlier this week in which he called the RSS “poison”.
He further said: “They wanted me to retract my statement. I said I don’t do that. When I say these things, I don’t think to apologise or retract the statements. This incident has strengthened my resolve to continue to expose the traitors. Because this is a fight which is more essential than the freedom struggle. Now, we have a common enemy. They must be exposed”.
While unveiling the statue of the late Gopinanathan Nair, a prominent Gandhian, at Neyyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram district Wednesday, Tushar had said: “We will be able to defeat the BJP, but the RSS is poison. They are trying to destroy the soul of the country. We should be fearful about that because if the soul is lost, everything is lost”.
The remarks evoked a strong response from the BJP as well as its ideological mentor, the RSS, with their workers holding protests and even trying to stop his car by blocking its path. Both Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Opposition Congress have condemned the protests.
At the function Friday, Tushar went on to say he was worried that “the descendants of the murderers of his grandfather” would now come after his statue. “I’m really worried. Will they fire at the statue of my great grandfather as they are habitual offenders?”
Deploring the RSS-BJP protests Thursday, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan called it an attack on the country’s secularism and democracy. “This is deplorable. An action that infringes upon freedom of speech cannot be allowed in a democratic society. There will be legal and democratic action against such tendencies… This incident shows that the protesters’ mindset is not different from that of those who assassinated Gandhi. A strong protest should emerge from secular and democratic society,” he said.
Meanwhile, Opposition leader V D Satheesan said the incident amounted to “an insult to Mahatma Gandhi”.
“The state government and the police should take strong action against this incident. There is nothing wrong with Tushar’s words that RSS is a cancer that has spread over the soul of the country. Fascism is ruling the country. It is eating into the soul of the country. Tushar was insulted for having stated the truth,” he said.
Tushar Gandhi is a noted author and human rights activist. (Express File Photo) 
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