Former Defence Minister and senior Congress leader A.K. Antony has sought a public apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his innuendoes — made during a public rally in Kerala on Sunday — regarding Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.
Mr. Antony said Mr. Modi had taken the sheen off the august position he was holding by using a language unbecoming of the position. “It is not the Prime Minister in Mr. Modi who spoke… but the RSS ‘pracharak’ in him,” Mr. Antony said, adding: “Mr. Modi chose to run away from Parliament where he would have been made to answer for his baseless allegations and instead, has hit the street.”
Alleging that Mr. Modi was playing the politics of revenge, Mr. Antony said it was part of a ploy to tarnish the image of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The memories of Jawaharlal Nehru were the sharpest weapon against the Sangh Parivar’s communal agenda and they wanted to erase his memory from people’s minds, he said.
‘Bid to weaken Congress’“They have already done it from the textbooks in some of the States where they are in power,” he said. Only by erasing the Nehruvian memory, would they be able to weaken the Congress and implement their communal agenda since the Congress was the only party fighting them at the national level, Mr. Antony added. “There are others, but they function at the regional level.” He also cautioned people against allowing the RSS to take root in Kerala.
