Hitting out at the United Progressive Alliance government's dismissal of four governors for their association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Bharatiya Janata Party politician Atal Bihari Vajpayee accused the Congress-led coalition on Tuesday of trying to impose a 'poisonous ideology' on the country and sowing the seeds of "another partition".

Vajpayee strongly defended the RSS ideology, calling it nationalistic, and asserted that the BJP was prepared to "fight the war of ideologies".

Addressing a function on the occasion of the 103rd birth anniversary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Vajpayee and former deputy prime minister Lal Kishenchand Advani attacked Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil's remark that the governors were removed because they subscribed to a "different ideology".

"There is an effort to impose a poisonous ideology on the nation," Vajpayee said. "They [the UPA government] say only those following their ideology can become governors."

Questioning the critics of the RSS, he asked, "Have we done any damage? The statement of the home minister citing ideology as the reason for dismissing the governors is unfortunate and condemnable." If governors are to be removed for following RSS ideology, then "none of us" want to be appointed to the constitutional post, he said.

Insisting that the "seeds for another partition are being sown", he said, "It is a challenge for us. But we have full faith in our ideology. It perfectly fits into the spirit of Constitution. It is in the interest of the nation."

Vajpayee said he could not understand the Congress' opposition to the RSS and asked the party to make its ideology clear. "It has always been the approach of Congress to consider its opponents as enemies and eliminate them," he claimed.

He pointed out that Mookerjee had been a minister in Jawaharlal Nehru's government and RSS cadres had participated in a 'jan parade' following the Chinese aggression in 1962, with Nehru hailing them as patriots. "Were they and their ideology different then," he asked.

Advani dubbed the sacking of governors an "outrageous assault on the Constitution" and said the mentality behind it was dangerous. "The court of law will decide if it violates the letter of the Constitution also," the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

Referring to the telephone call made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Vajpayee and Advani to seek their co-operation in ending the impasse in Parliament, Advani said, "Their talk about co-operation is only in words while in practice they are not working for co-operation but confrontation."

Without naming Patil, he said a minister called him up saying the government wanted the opposition's co-operation "and I said you don't want co-operation, but only talk about it. They [the Congress] don't have the attitude to accommodate others. Their attitude is to isolate the BJP."

Advani slammed Union Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh for not inviting the BJP to the official Minorities Convention in New Delhi last week, accusing him of deliberately sidelining them. He said the UPA government was adopting an "aggressive" attitude towards the BJP because of "differences in ideology. Even during the Sindhu Darshan festival held recently, all those from the BJP were deliberately kept out."

Advani recalled that his first official engagement after becoming home minister for the first time in 1998 was to visit Kerala to attend the funeral of veteran Communist leader E M S Namboodiripad. "Patriotism is much above ideology," he said.

BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu charged the UPA government with setting wrong precedents. "Do they want to practise the politics of untouchability?" he asked. "Is there no place for dissent or differences of opinion in a democracy?" Naidu, who is also president of the Mookerjee Smriti Nyas, said a research unit would be set up in the body in the leader's memory.