The Hindu : RSS chief to visit Pak.?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 15, 2003

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RSS chief to visit Pak.?

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI AUG. 14. If there were to be an occasion, then the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief, K.S. Sudarshan, will visit Pakistan.

This, of course, was a hypothetical response to a hypothetical question, posed by a journalist to Ram Madhav, a spokesperson of the RSS, at a press meet here today.

After all, "Pakistan is part of our cultural heritage."

Earlier, he was asked "what would it take for the RSS chief to visit Pakistan." When a more pointed query emerged, asking if the Sarsanghchalak would visit Pakistan, he responded, "if there were occasion."

In fact, he appeared unhappy that not one of the three practising or former journalists nominated by the RSS could visit Pakistan for the South Asian Free Media Association event but said "it was not by our design. I will not blame others but there was some communication gap."

The three nominated were Muzzafar Hussain, M. G. Vaidya, former spokesman of the RSS and Editor of Tarun Bharat, and another writer, K. P. Aggarwal. "All the three were our men. The RSS does not send people as nominees but we were willing to let them go in their individual capacity. But they were our men."

Mr. Vaidya, he said, had in fact made his reservations till New Delhi from where the entire team was to visit the country across the border. But that was not to be.

Mr. Madhav stressed that the RSS had been enabling some interface with Pakistan. "Remember, some two years ago, the Panchajanya, which you call our mouthpiece, organised a seminar in Delhi in collaboration with the Jung newspaper of Pakistan? People from both countries participated in it."

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