“Fascist” RSS captured all institutions in India: Rahul Gandhi in UK

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi has targeted RSS by calling it a "fundamentalist" and "fascist" organisation which has pretty much captured all the institutions in India.

"The nature of democratic contest in India has completely changed and the reason is that one organisation called RSS - a fundamentalist, fascist organisation has basically captured pretty much all of India's institutions," Gandhi said during an interaction at the Chatham House in London.

He then spoke about the condition of the Dalits and minorities in India. Gandhi said, "In India, you can see what is being done to Dalits, tribals, and minorities. It is not that Congress is saying it. There are articles in the foreign press all the time that there is a serious problem with Indian democracy."

The Congress leader also mentioned how the various institutions in the country were under threat.

"It shocked me how successful they have been at capturing the different institutions of our country. Press, Judiciary, Parliament, and Election Commission are all under threat and are controlled in one way or the other," Rahul Gandhi said.

"You can ask any Opposition leader as to how agencies are used. My phone had Pegasus on it, which was not happening when we were in power," he added.

Earlier, Gandhi, who is in London as part of a week-long visit to the UK, attacked on BJP, saying he is not afraid of the criticism against him as he asserted that it's a fight between courage and cowardice, and love and hatred.

"The more they attack me, the better that is for me, because the more I understand... This is a fight between courage and cowardice. It's a fight between respect and disrespect. It's a fight between love and hatred..." Gandhi said.

He said his 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' was demonstrating to the whole country what the real India is about. "What Indian values are? What our religions tell us? What our different languages tell us? What our different cultures tell us (that) we are one country with many, many different ideas. And we have the capability of living together harmoniously without hatred without anger without disrespect. And it's when we do that, we are successful. And that was the message of the yatra," he said.

Attacking the BJP, the 52-year-old former Congress president said, "On the other side, we have an ideology of hatred and violence, a disrespectful ideology that attacks people because of their ideas. And you must have noticed one thing that this is in the nature of BJP and the RSS." "If you notice the statement of the Foreign Minister, he said China is much more powerful than us. To think China is more powerful than us, how can I pick a fight with them? At the heart of the ideology is cowardice," he said, referring to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's reported remarks during an interview.

With inputs from agencies