Congress president Sonia Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the National Democratic Alliance regime at the Aligarh Muslim University on Saturday for "targeting minorities, distorting history and subverting institutions of excellence."

Gandhi, who inaugurated a national seminar on 'Nehru and Nationalism' organised by the Centre of Nehru Studies, is the first member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to visit the university in four decades.

The leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha exhorted all secular groups and parties to join hands and wage "a struggle against those forces who wish to deliberately distort the essence of all religions by abandoning the path of [Jawaharlal] Nehru and [Mahatma] Gandhi."

"Let no one be misled by the mask of modernity and social justice frequently presented by communal forces. They remain wedded to their agenda of hatred and divisiveness. Standing today in this historic institution, I call on all secular and progressive forces to join hands. Let us together defeat those who subvert our constitutional values behind a reformist veneer," she said.

In an apparent attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA regime, particularly Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi's 'saffronisation' policy, she alleged that secularism has come under assault in the past few years.

"That assault continues unabated. It takes many forms. Textbooks are being rewritten, institutions of excellence are being subverted, scholars are being hounded, minorities are being targeted," Gandhi charged.

"We must reaffirm the collective will to combat communalism of all kinds in a frontal manner. Communalism of all kinds is pernicious and destructive," she said.

Gandhi said that while most Indians respected other faiths, "a handful…cutting across religious boundaries have become self-appointed guardians of their own faiths. It is they who seek to destroy social peace and harmony. It is they who want all of us to be prisoners of the past, of a past invented and interpreted by them, while most of us want to move forward and live in amity. This is the real battleground for secularism. It is more than a majority-minority issue," she said.

The Congress leader said it is crucial to build institutions for promoting dialogue and understanding among religions.

She said the seminar could not have come at a more opportune time, when there was an urgent need for a rediscovery of Nehru. "Even his critics acknowledge his contributions to the building of a secular democracy when they go abroad. But at home, they revile him, his memory, and his accomplishments. This hypocrisy cannot go unchallenged," she stated.