INDORE: Former VHP leader Pravin Togadia today said former President and Congress veteran Pranab Mukherjee did not talk about the views of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar on nationalism during his address at the RSS headquarters yesterday.
“Mukherjee mentioned about the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru on nationalism during his speech yesterday. But he made no mention of Hedgewar and Savarkar’s views on nationalism,” Togadia told reporters at the Indore Press Club.
“There are two ideologies on nationalism in the country- first propagated by Gandhi and Nehru, while the other one that of Hedgewar and Savarkar,” he added.
He demanded that the Centre should pass a law in the Parliament to pave the way for construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya.
The Ayodhya issue is still pending in the Supreme Court. Taking a dig at BJP veteran L K Advani over this, Togadia said, “Was this case not under the Supreme Court’s consideration when Advani had taken out the rath yatra? Then why did he take out rath yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya?
“Rath yatra should have been taken out from the Supreme Court to Ayodhya,” he said.
Replying to a question on the Rs 8.5 crore funds collected from people for the construction of Ram temple in the 1990s, he said there was no need to raise doubts over that money.
“We have maintained a proper account of those funds,” he said.
Refusing to reveal the name of his proposed organisation despite queries from media, he said he would make an announcement about it and its future action plan in New Delhi on June 24.
Before heading to Mandsaur today to take part in the ongoing protest by farmers, he also alleged that due to the wrong policies of the central and state governments, farmers were reeling under debts and forced to commit suicide.
He said farmers should be given one-and-a-half times of their production cost as the minimum support price (MSP) for all the crops by calculating the input costs. (AGENCIES)