Criticising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for calling for a review of words “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble to the Constitution, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the Hindutva organisation’s “mask had come off again”.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Constitution hurts the RSS because it talks about equality, secularism and justice, Gandhi said on social media.

“RSS-BJP does not want the Constitution, but Manusmriti,” said the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. “They want to enslave the marginalised and the poor again by snatching their rights. Their real agenda is to snatch away a powerful weapon like the Constitution from them.”

Gandhi added: “RSS should stop dreaming like this – we will never let them succeed. Every patriotic Indian will protect the Constitution till the last breath.”

The Congress leader’s comments came a day after the RSS on Thursday said that the inclusion of the words “secular” and “socialist” in the Preamble to the Constitution should be reviewed.

“The words were added during [the] Emergency, when fundamental rights were suspended, Parliament did not function, and the judiciary became lame,” said RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale.

He added: “So, whether they should remain in the Preamble should be considered. The Preamble is eternal. Are the thoughts of socialism as an ideology eternal for India?”

Hosabale made the statements while speaking at an event marking 50 years since the Emergency was declared by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government in 1975.

The words “socialist” and “secular” were not part of the Constitution adopted in 1950 and were added in 1976 through the 42nd constitutional amendment.

In November, the Supreme Court rejected a batch of petitions seeking the deletion of the two terms from the Preamble to the Constitution. The court said there was no legitimate justification for challenging the constitutional amendment several decades later.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said on Friday that the “proposal” made by the Hindutva organisation “exposes the RSS’ long-standing objective of subverting the Constitution and its intent to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, in pursuit of its Hindutva project.”

The Congress had on Thursday night criticised Hosabale’s remarks, saying that the RSS and the BJP’s ideology stood in “direct opposition” to the Constitution.

The remarks were not merely a suggestion, but a “deliberate assault on the soul of our Constitution”, alleged the Opposition party.

“It is part of a long-standing conspiracy to dismantle Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s vision for a just, inclusive and democratic India – something the RSS-BJP has always been plotting,” the party alleged.

In 2015, a controversy erupted after the BJP-led Union government’s newspaper advertisements on Republic Day featured a Preamble with the two words omitted.

In September 2023, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury claimed that the two words were missing from the Preamble in the copies of the Constitution distributed to the MPs in the new Parliament building.