‘Getting threat calls, abuses for questioning RSS’: Priyank Kharge

Bengaluru: IT-BT Minister Priyank Kharge claimed on Tuesday that he was receiving threat calls after he called for a ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from using public places for its activities, including parks and playgrounds.

“For the past two days, my phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Calls filled with threats, intimidation and the filthiest abuse directed at me and my family, simply because I dared to question and restrain RSS activities in government schools, colleges and public institutions,” Priyank said in a tweet.

“But I’m neither shaken nor surprised. When the RSS didn’t spare Mahatma Gandhi or Babasaheb Ambedkar, why would they spare me?” Priyank, the son of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, said.

On October 4, Priyank wrote to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah seeking a prohibition on RSS holding activities on government properties.

“An organisation named the RSS has been using government and aided schools and public government grounds for shakas, and, through sloganeering, has been developing thoughts in the minds of children and youths against the integrity of the country and the intentions of the Constitution,” Priyank wrote.

Siddaramaiah has directed Chief Secretary Shalini Rajneesh to examine Priyank’s appeal.

Priyank said he cannot be silenced. “If they think threats and personal jibes will silence me, they are mistaken. This has just begun,” he said.

“It is time to build a society founded on the principles of Buddha, Basavanna and Babasaheb, a society rooted in equality, reason and compassion and purge this nation of the most dangerous viRuSS (sic),” he said.

When contacted, Priyank said he received calls from international or masked numbers. Asked if he would lodge a complaint, the minister said: “There’s no point. The last time I complained, the Union government wrote to the state saying masked IP addresses can’t be traced.” 

The Opposition BJP has slammed Priyank for seeking a ban on the RSS’s activities in public places. “Successive Congress governments have repeatedly planned and plotted to ban the RSS, but have failed utterly every time - owing to the RSS ideology of nationalism and social reform always triumphing over the sinister, anti-national designs of the Congress,” Karnataka BJP president BY Vijayendra said.