A day after BJP general secretary Ram Madhav set off a controversy with the idea of Akhand Bharat, or a greater India with Pakistan and Bangladesh, “through popular goodwill coming together,” the BJP clarified that neither the party nor the party’s government shared the view.
Party spokesperson M.J. Akbar said the text cannot be separated from the context. “A particular question was asked to him [Ram Madhav] to which he gave this reply. As far as the BJP and the NDA government are concerned, we consider India and Pakistan sovereign States and our position was best articulated by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Lahore.” Mr. Vajpayee had, in Lahore in 1999, described how he was being dissuaded from visiting the Minar-e-Pakistan, the country’s national monument, as it would endorse the creation of that country.
“I insisted on going because I saw no logic in what was being told to me; and I made it loud and clear to them that Pakistan does not require my stamp for its entity. Pakistan has its own stamp,” he had said at a banquet on that occasion. The BJP has since kept to this stance.
The RSS, which does hew to an idea of an Akhand Bharat, also tried to finesse its position, as Mr. Madhav’s comments were aired at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic overture to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif by visiting him in Lahore. Dr. Rakesh Sinha, author of a well regarded biography of RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar, said that the concept of Akhand Bharat in the RSS was more about cultural nationalism rather than politics. “Akhand Bharat means Islamic countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh acknowledge pre-Islamic Hindu cultural roots, not political merger,” he said in tweets and while speaking to The Hindu.
The official spokesperson of the RSS, Manmohan Vaidya, after first distancing the RSS from the comment on Saturday, refused to comment on the matter when The Hindu contacted him. He only said that he agreed with Dr. Sinha’s formulation of Akhand Bharat through cultural nationalism.
‘Not about war’
Mr. Ram Madhav, meanwhile, clarified to The Hindu that he was asked a question about the map of Akhand Bharat at the RSS offices and he had explained the ideological concept. “I made it clear that this was not about India waging war and forcibly uniting countries. It was about cultural nationalism and shared cultural ethos of the sub-continent,” he said.
His explanation did not convince the Opposition. “Ram Madhav’s statement might give a setback to the situation of friendship that is being created by the Prime Minister,” Congress leader Meem Afzal said.
