‘Built on hatred, spreads hatred’: Congress MP Manickam Tagore equates RSS with Al-Qaeda

New Delhi: Congress MP Manickam Tagore on Sunday criticised senior party leader Digvijaya Singh for praising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) organisational strength, calling it a “famous self-goal”.

Speaking to ANI, Tagore drew a sharp comparison between the RSS and extremist groups, arguing that organisations built on hatred offer nothing to learn from.

“The RSS is an organisation built on hatred, and it spreads hatred. There is nothing to learn from hatred. Can you learn anything from Al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda is an organisation of hatred. It hates others. What is there to learn from that organisation?” he said.

Tagore added that the Congress, with its 140-year history, should instead be the model for unity and grassroots mobilisation. Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, he said, “Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Congress party into a people’s movement. Should this organisation learn from those organisations of hatred?”

The remarks came after Digvijaya Singh shared a black-and-white photograph from the 1990s, sourced from the Q&A platform Quora, showing a young Narendra Modi seated on the floor near senior BJP leader LK Advani at an event in Gujarat. In a post on X, Singh described Modi’s rise from a grassroots worker to Prime Minister as an example of the “power of organisation”.

“I found this picture on the Quora site. It is very impressive… This is the power of the organisation,” Singh wrote, while tagging senior Congress leaders and Prime Minister Modi.

Tagore said Singh’s comments did not help the party at a time when Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi was challenging the Centre. “Rahul Gandhi is completely with people, fighting for people against government monopoly. We should support him, and such a statement does not help in Rahul ji’s struggle,” he said.

Earlier, Tagore had described Singh’s remarks as an “excellent own goal”, later adding on social media that there was “nothing to learn from Godse’s organisation other than hate”.

Singh subsequently clarified that his comments were limited to the RSS’s organisational structure and not its ideology, stressing that he remains opposed to the RSS and Prime Minister Modi.

The BJP seized on the episode to attack the Congress. Party national spokesperson CR Kesavan said Singh’s remarks had exposed what he described as the “autocratic and undemocratic” functioning of the Congress leadership, questioning whether Rahul Gandhi would respond to what he called a “truth bomb”.