New Delhi, 29 July—Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi today held RSS responsible for reducing the country’s educational structure to an “extortion system” saying that while former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation was only symbolic, the real culprit was the Sangh.
Parliament’s Wednesday session opened with Rahul Gandhi criticising the Narendra Modi government and the RSS as he sought to discuss the Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026.
Accusing the ruling dispensation of capturing India’s education system, “stifling students’ voices” and reducing education to an “extortion system”, the Congress leader called the country’s education system “terrible” and “cruel”, alleging that rampant privatisation had turned it into a tool of exploitation.
“Our system is terrible, it’s cruel… Everything is being privatised… It is an extortion system, it is a brutal, terrible system. The soul of the system has been captured by the RSS,” Gandhi said.
Dismissing former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as merely symbolic, he claimed students across the country were frustrated because they were being denied the freedom to think independently or pursue their aspirations.
“Rajnath Singh said that we are not the UPA, our ministers never resign. He is right. Resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan is superficial because Dharmendra Pradhan never ran the Education Ministry. The organisation that runs the education ministry is called the RSS. The man who runs it is an OSD sitting in the Minister’s office,” he alleged.
“So, what the students are really irritated about is that they are not allowed to be students in India, not allowed to follow their passion, not allowed to say what they want, they are not allowed to ask the questions that they want. They have to buy this nonsensical history that the RSS fantasises about,” he said.
Calling Pradhan only “a symbol”, he said, “…the real enemy is the RSS… They are the people who want you to be ‘Andhbhakts’.”
Alleging that ideological influence had spread across India’s universities, Gandhi said: “Every single university in India has a vice chancellor from RSS”.
The Congress MP leader recounted a conversation with a student to explain what he called the difference between a student, someone obsessed with image-building, and an “andhbhakt”.
“She said the student wears the truth on his or her chest proudly. I said, what about the other type? She said the other type requires an image. It requires an image and as the image is not true because the idiot is trying to pretend that he is God, he has to create this massive image. I asked her a question: Where does the third category go? That of ‘Andhbhakt’. She said, ‘Andhbhakt’ is a person who is absolutely convinced that another idiot is God,” Gandhi said.
The remarks triggered loud protests from the Treasury benches, with Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju urging the Chair to expunge what he termed an “unparliamentary word”.
“Had Rahul Gandhi not used ‘unparliamentary’ word, nobody would have objected. I believe that he is using a word in the name of a student, but it is he who is using it… He cannot use ‘unparliamentary’ word, it should be expunged,” Rijiju said.
Defence minister Rajnath Singh also said that it should be removed.
“I humbly request that the unparliamentary word used by the LoP be expunged and I urge everyone on my side to maintain silence and listen to him,” Rajnath Singh said.
Rahul Gandhi also questioned the absence of Union home minister Amit Shah from the House and accused that he was the one authorising Delhi police of taking action during CJP’s ‘Sansad Chalo’ march.
“I am very happy today to see that the so-called Home Minister of this country does not have the courage to come and sit here… Why is the home minister not here today? The home minister is not here today because he is scared. The home minister authorised the shooting of our students. He put pellets into the blood of our students. He ordered the students of India to be shot,” Gandhi alleged.
Referring to the nationwide CJP protest that was ultimately called off with the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and after all their demands were fulfilled, he said he was encouraged by the conduct of the demonstrators, calling their movement an expression of hope rather than anger.
I was very excited, reassured by what the future of this country did on our streets. This was not anger, not violence, not hatred. This was a deep expression of the youth of this country, of the future generation of this country and I feel that all political parties must respect this expression, including my friends in the BJP.” .
“I am pretty certain that if my friends in BJP were to go and ask their own children what they felt about what their brothers and sisters were doing, they would find agreement among their own children. There is nothing wrong with what has happened and every Indian should be proud,” he added.
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