Summary:
Nagpur: It was former President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit here in the first week of June that inspired the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s current impetus to change public perception about it, according to RSS observer Dileep Deodhar. “Pranab is believed to have told Bhagwat that the public need to know that Sangh is not anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit and not against following the Constitution. Even Congress president Rahul Gandhi attacked the RSS,” said Deodhar.Deodhar also recounts an incident when an outsider induced a change in the RSS thought-process. “Riding on this grey areas, detractors then put the RSS in the dock and even invented tags like ‘Hindu terror organisation’. “It was a meeting in early 1977 at Nagpur airport’s VIP enclosure between the then RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras and Janata Party stalwart Chandrashekhar..