Everyone in India is a Hindu: Jnanpith winner Nemade

In a detailed interview in the latest issue of Panchjanya, the mouthpiece of RSS, Nemade said the increasing influence of English is “very dangerous and aggressive”.

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“The form of English language is monstrous and its grammar – which swallows other languages and diversities – is scary,” Nemade told Panchjanya editor Hitesh Shankar.

Asserting that only Hindu culture can keep people united — since it does not discriminate between people — the Marathi author also observed, “All the people here are Hindus. Even Muslims consider themselves as Hindus. The likes of Akbar and Aurangzeb used to consider themselves as Hindus.” He added that the wedge between the Hindus and Muslims was engineered by the British.

The writer, who once accused Rushdie and V S Naipaul of “pandering to the West,” also took on the subsequent inclusion of the word “secularism” in the Preamble of the Constitution. “I am vehemently against the word secular, its definition and its thought. I should be allowed to live in a culture in which I lived earlier. I urge the intellectuals to not cloak us in foreign words,” Nemade said in the interview.

On RSS’s recent resolution on making the mother tongue the medium of primary education, Nemade called it a matter of pleasure and said he would even “publicise it if possible”.