On Friday morning, the nation stood at the crossroads of politics—honoring two immortal flames that shaped its destiny. It was the birth of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the ‘Iron Man,’ who fused the fragments of a divided land into one pulse, and the martyrdom of Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, the ‘Iron Lady,’ who stood firm to shield that fragile unity. The air hung heavy—woven with reverence and unrest, carrying both pride and paradox in its breath.
At a press conference held in New Delhi—where every corridor still whirred with the echoes of freedom’s first footsteps—Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge stood with the gravity of a man who has seen India’s democracy rise from hope to heartbreak.
His words were measured, his gaze unwavering, his tone laced with both sorrow and defiance. Then, with the conviction of one unafraid of consequence, he declared, in a moment that echoed the weight of history: “It is my personal belief that the RSS must be banned. The roots of many of our nation’s law and order crises lie within the BJP-RSS nexus. And by permitting government servants to align with the Sangh, the Prime Minister dishonours the very legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel—the Iron Man who once banned it himself in defence of India’s unity.”
That sentence, simple but incendiary, ignited a thousand echoes — not just across political aisles but through the corridors of India’s memory.
SHADOW BENEATH THE STATUE
It was no mere coincidence that Kharge chose Patel Jayanti, a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi annually pays homage to his political and symbolic ancestor at the towering Statue of Unity in Gujarat, to make his statement. This day, which celebrates the birth of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a unifying force in Indian history, was the perfect backdrop for Kharge’s historical rebuttal.
Kharge’s accusation was not just political—it was deeply rooted in history. For decades, RSS has claimed Patel as its misunderstood ally, a nationalist who shared its zeal for Hindu unity. However, history, Kharge reminded, bears its own distinct character.
“Sardar Patel himself banned the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination,” Kharge said, “and wrote in a letter to Syama Prasad Mookerjee that the atmosphere created by the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha led to that tragedy.”
In 1948, Patel’s letter to Mookerjee had indeed recorded the anguish of a man who had just lost the Father of the Nation — an anguish not of emotion alone, but of accountability. “The RSS men,” Patel wrote, “expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”
The lines, written in restrained bureaucratic prose, still drip with moral thunder. To Kharge, invoking that letter was not a matter of rhetoric; it was a reclamation of history, of memory, and of Patel himself from the saffron hue that modern power had draped upon him.
THE BATTLE FOR PATEL’S SOUL
Politics, in India, has never been a mere contest of parties. It is a contest of pasts — a tug of war for the moral authority of history. The BJP calls Patel a nationalist whose realism tempered Nehru’s idealism. The Congress calls him its own — a man whose iron will was forged in Gandhian fire, not ideological hate.
On this October day, both sides laid claim to the same legacy, as if the soul of Patel were a relic of power.
Prime Minister Modi, standing before Patel’s statue in Kevadia, spoke with patriotic pride. He hailed Patel as the “unifier of India,” lamenting that the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “did not allow Patel to integrate Kashmir as he did the other princely states.”
In his words, Patel’s unfulfilled dream became a dagger aimed at Congress’s chest — a subtle reminder that Modi sees himself as the true heir of Iron Man’s resolve.
Kharge’s response was not just swift and unsparing, but deeply personal. He didn’t just accuse Modi of political distortion, but of a betrayal of moral values. His words carried the weight of personal conviction and emotional investment in the issue.
“When Patel himself banned the RSS,” Kharge said, “and gave all the reasons for doing so, then how can the Prime Minister, who claims to worship him, allow government servants to be associated with the same organization? That is not reverence. That is disrespect.”
THE POISONED CHALICE OF REVIVAL
There was a metaphor Kharge used — one that was ancient and chilling. “This is like tasting poison,” he said. “We know the result — certain death. Yet the Prime Minister insists on serving it again.”
He was referring to the government’s decision to lift the decades-old restriction that had prevented civil servants from associating with the RSS. The move, framed by the government as a recognition of cultural freedom, was to Kharge a deliberate corrosion of secular governance — a breach between the neutrality of the State and the ideology of the Sangh.
He paused, then warned: “What was once ended has now been revived. And those responsible will bear the weight of what happens next.”
Something was haunting in his words — not merely the fear of political polarization, but the dread of a cycle that India had seen too often: communal wounds reopened, histories recontested, and unity shaken by whispers of ideology.
PATEL, NEHRU, AND THE FORGOTTEN LETTERS
In a nation where memory is often curated for convenience, Kharge became a historian. He spoke of the letters between Patel and Nehru, the men who were too often portrayed as rivals but were bound by respect and a shared purpose.
“They always tried to show that there was a rift between Nehru and Patel,” Kharge said. “But they had great ties. They praised each other. Nehru called Patel the architect of India’s unity, and Patel called Nehru an ideal for the country.”
The reminder was surgical — aimed at dismantling the BJP’s long-cultivated myth of Patel as the pragmatic Hindu nationalist opposed to Nehru’s secular idealism.
The truth, Kharge suggested, lay in their partnership: Patel built the steel frame of India; Nehru filled it with the dream.
BETWEEN THE IRON MAN AND THE IRON LADY
Kharge reminded the press that the day itself bore a solemn symmetry. “Today,” he said with quiet reverence, “we honor the birth of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Iron Man who forged India’s unity, and mourn the martyrdom of Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, the Iron Lady who safeguarded it. Two pillars of steel—one who built the nation, the other who bled to keep it whole.”
It was a poetic parallel — Patel’s unifying force in 1947 and Indira’s defiant leadership in 1984, both symbolizing strength in the face of siege.
But beneath the tribute lay a lament: that the unity both leaders fought for is once again threatened — not by foreign invaders or secessionist princes, but by internal divisions born of ideology.
“Patel fought for peace and unity,” Kharge said. “But after bringing that unity, anyone who tries to break it should be taught a lesson. And you know who is breaking it today.”
His pause was deliberate. The implication is unmistakable.
THE POLITICAL THEATRE OF MEMORY
Every October 31, India performs a ritual. The Prime Minister garlands the statue of Patel in Kevadia. The Congress garlands his portrait at its headquarters in Delhi. Both speak of unity. Both accuse the other of betrayal.
The public watches, weary yet enthralled, as history is turned into theatre — each side claiming moral ownership of men long gone. But Kharge’s tone this year was heavier, almost elegiac. His fight was not just with the BJP, but with what he saw as the rewriting of India’s moral compass.
He recalled that the ban on the RSS in 1948 was not arbitrary. It followed a government inquiry, after Gandhi’s assassination, which concluded that the RSS’s “communal propaganda” had created an atmosphere conducive to violence.
In the months that followed, Patel himself defended the decision before Parliament, stating that the organization had “encouraged hatred between Hindus and Muslims.”
For Kharge, these words from Patel were not historical footnotes; they were warnings that still rang true in today’s India.
A STRUGGLE BEYOND GENERATIONS
At the press conference, when a reporter asked whether his statement might “create disunity,” Kharge smiled faintly—not dismissively, but with the fatigue of one who has seen the same question asked for fifty years.
“I clearly feel,” he said, “that the government has revived something that had ended. These people will be responsible for whatever happens in the country.”
It was not just a political charge—it was an omen. Kharge spoke of revival not as a bureaucratic act but as a resurrection of an ideology that once tested India’s conscience. And he warned, in poetic fatalism, that the results of such revival are never benign.
“Till 2024, nothing happened,” he said. “Now this poison is being tasted again. It will destroy what unity remains.”
His words seemed to carry the exhaustion of a generation that fought to keep secular India alive, now watching its pillars erode under the strain of revisionism.
THE LEGACY THAT REFUSES TO SLEEP
The political battlefield between the BJP and Congress has often been fought in the names of the dead.
Gandhi’s peace, Nehru’s vision, Patel’s unity, Indira’s courage — all are summoned like ancestral spirits to bless or curse the living. Yet, beneath the noise, a deeper question remains: who truly carries their legacy?
For Modi, Patel’s statue is a symbol of national pride — a colossal testament to unity achieved by willpower and strength. For Kharge, Patel’s letter is a document of conscience — a reminder that unity cannot be built upon hate. Between these two readings of patriotism lies the moral chasm of modern India.
Kharge’s insistence that Patel “resides in our hearts” was not mere nostalgia. It was resistance. “Patel’s ideas of brotherhood and harmony,” he said, “are inseparable from the Congress ideology.”
And in invoking that, Kharge was attempting to reclaim the language of nationalism itself — to argue that love of the nation need not wear saffron, that patriotism could still speak the language of plurality.
THE IRON THAT DOES NOT BEND
There is irony, almost cruel, in how Patel — a man who crushed princely rebellions and unified a scattered land — has now become the most divided figure in political remembrance.
Kharge’s defiance on this day was not new, but it was sharper, braver, perhaps more personal.
He stood not merely as a party president but as a keeper of an inheritance that feels perpetually under siege. When asked again about his statement on banning the RSS, he did not retreat.
“It is my personal opinion,” he repeated, “and I will say it openly. It should be done.”
In an age of political caution, it was a declaration rarely heard — a return to the kind of moral absolutism that defined politics before power became an end in itself.
“It is my personal belief that the RSS must be banned. The roots of many of our nation’s law and order crises lie within the BJP-RSS nexus. And by permitting government servants to align with the Sangh, the Prime Minister dishonours the very legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel—the Iron Man who once banned it himself in defence of India’s unity”
SILENCE OF THE IRON MAN
Outside, beyond the noise of Delhi’s microphones, Patel’s statue stood unmoving in Kevadia — steel and stone against sky and river. It neither applauded Modi’s words nor Kharge’s anger. But if it could speak, perhaps it would ask what has become of the unity it once forged.
Would Patel recognize his reflection in today’s India — where nationalism is a weapon, and unity a slogan? Would he smile at the giant statue, or weep at the smallness of the politics surrounding it?
History offers no answers, only echoes.
BETWEEN THE LINES OF LEGACY
As the press conference drew to a close, Kharge’s final words were not of rage but of remembrance.
“We are celebrating the man who made India one,” he said. “And the woman who gave her life to keep it that way. Let us not let divisive forces undo their work.”
Around him, cameras flashed, microphones buzzed, and the news cycle spun into motion. But for a fleeting moment, there was something beyond politics — a sense that the argument was not about parties, but about India’s soul.
Because beneath every ideological battle, beneath every televised speech and trending hashtag, lies the quiet question that still haunts the nation: What kind of unity did Patel dream of — and who among us still believes in it?
THE IRONY
Even as Kharge’s remarks flooded social media, the Prime Minister’s tribute speech from Kevadia echoed across the same feeds — one leader invoking Patel’s strength to unify India, another invoking Patel’s warning to protect it from division.
Two versions of patriotism, facing each other across time. And somewhere between them — between statue and memory, between history and its rewriters — stands the idea of India itself: wounded, resilient, still searching for balance between pride and peace.
Kharge’s words may fade from headlines by next week. Modi’s speech will find its place in another government video montage.
But the debate they represent will outlast both — because it is not a fight over policy, but over who gets to define India’s soul.
THE IRON NEVER RUSTS
Patel’s bronze eyes stare eastward, toward a nation that still bears his signature but not always his spirit. He once said, “Take to the path of Dharma — the path of truth and justice — for that is the only way to bring unity.”
Kharge’s outcry, Modi’s rhetoric, and the RSS’s march — all claim to walk that path. But perhaps, as the Iron Man’s statue gleams against the setting sun, the truth lies not in who claims his legacy, but in who lives by it. Because unity—like iron—does not rust when remembered. It rusts only when forgotten.
