New Delhi: In an oblique reference to Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress that has invoked sharp reactions from the principal Opposition party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that architects of Indian systems continued to see the country through the ‘prisms of England’.

At an event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’ Azad Hind government at the historic Red Fort, the PM also sent across a sharp message of India’s strength in security, announcing that any challenge will be met with twice as much reply.

Invoking Bose’s stand to see India from an Indian perspective, Modi said, “This is our misfortune that after Independence, the architects of Indian systems saw India through the prisms of England. Our culture, our education, our system had faced a lot of problem because of this approach.”

“If country had the guidance of leaders such as Subhas Bose and Sardar Patel that foreign vision would not have prevailed,” Modi said, possibly hinting at the legacy of Cambridge-educated Nehru, who was India’s first Prime Minister.

“We reject this vitriolic and diabolical design of Modi government to defame national icons with the content it deserves. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel were completely against the philosophy of sectarianism and bigotry that is espoused by PM Modi’s ideological patriarch- the RSS & Hindu Mahasabha,” Congress’ senior spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said hours after the PM’s programme.

While Modi maintained that he is following the path of stalwarts like Subhas Bose to make the country stronger, the Congress retorted that the BJP is portraying Bose as Nehru’s rival to “score political mileage”.Singhvi also dished out several examples like Nehru’s speech in August 1947 that made a special mention of Bose, regretting his absence on the occasion and that Nehru was the defence lawyer in the Red Fort trials of the INA.