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Praveen Togadia (born in 1957) is the International General Secretary of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). An oncologist by profession, he was 22 when he was appointed chief instructor of an RSS officers training camp in 1979.

Arundhati Roy described Praveen Togadia as a "rabble-rousing demagogue of the Hindu right wing, synonymous with inflammatory hate speech against Muslims".

Views on Hindutva

According to Togadia, his vision of India is that of an officially Hindu, militarily strong state that gives equal rights to every religion, just like the United Kingdom is officially a Christian country but with strong secular values and equal rights to minorities.

Media Portrayal and Response

Muslim newspapers accuse him of being a "Kaffir" and a "Hindu Taliban".

He has been banned from attending processions and numerous other sanctions have been made against him.

Togadia has asserted in online interviews that he does not mandate violence in the Hindutva Movement, and stressed that he was not against minorities. he also says that the majority of the work concerning the emancipation of the lower castes is not done by Christian Missionaries but by Hindu organizations:

"More than 25,000 social service projects are going on among the downtrodden people. It is wrong to say that the church is serving the downtrodden. It is an end to the means of conversion. On the contrary, from 1871, the first census of India, to rule for prolonged time, the British tried to divide Indian society by a census. By converting, the church has given the scheduled tribe people a different identity and tried to destroy indigenous culture, ethos, behaviour rather than serving them"

The concept of minorities is alien to India because we don't believe in discriminating on the basis of caste, creed or religion. As such, after Jews, Hindus have suffered a lot in the world to save their culture and motherland

A Hindu cannot hate any religion. He believes that to pray to God is the same, so we can't hate Christianity. But we are against the conversion activity of the Church. We love Christianity but we oppose Churchanity as it was opposed by Europe.

References

1. Arundhati Roy (2004). An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire. South End Press. pp. p121. ISBN 0896087271. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
2. milligazette interview
3. Tribune India
4. ^ 'Nobody has the right to convert anybody in India', Praveenbhai Togadia Chat

External links

• The Praveenbhai Togadia Chat - Rediff

• Hindutva
• Living people
• People from Gujarat
• Oncologists