Dhaka: India's Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat said he believes the entire Indian continent is a Hindu nation. Speaking at a Sangh training camp in Mathura on Friday, Bhagwat reiterated that there should not be any doubt that everyone residing in India, Bangladesh or Pakistan are part of the Hindu nation, reports India Today.

Bhagwat said, ‘Bharat ek Hindu rashtra hai (India is a Hindu state). We shouldn’t have any doubt about it. And we need to stick to this belief. We can change ourselves in other areas. But the belief that India is a Hindu nation cannot be discarded at any cost.’

Referring to multiple ways in which people are identified, he said, ‘Some people call themselves Hindus, some say they are Indian. There are some other people who call themselves Aryans and some say they don’t believe in idol worship. This doesn’t make any difference when it comes to accepting India as a Hindu rashtra.’

Bhagwat claimed that besides India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also Hindu nations.

‘Those who are living in the Indian subcontinent belong to the Hindu nation. They may have different citizenships but their nationality is Hindu,’ he said at Sriji Baba Saraswati Shishu Mandir in Mathura where the RSS training camp of western zone was organised on Friday.

To prove his point Bhagwat took a leaf out of the history book: ‘The Arabs used to pronounce ‘Sa’ as ‘Ha’. So they would call us Hindu because there was river Sindhu in our country. It was in the area where Pakistan was carved out in 1947. In 1971, Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan. This was the reason that the citizenship of residents of those areas changed. But they didn’t leave their houses or their nation. This is why I say that their nationality remains the same,’ he said.

RSS chief said that some people are ignorant and they claim that they are Muslims or Christians. ‘The ancient name of this part of the land is Hindustan. Obviously whosoever is living here are Hindus,’ he further said.

Besides, in an interview with India Today on Thursday he said, ‘Before partition, everyone living in ‘Akhand Bharat’ was a Hindu, no matter what religious thoughts he followed. Hindu is an identity of the people of this region, not their religion. People in the Arab countries even today refer to the residents of the country as Hindus, since they are from Hindustan and those who left this country during partition, did not lose their Hindu identity, they just changed their citizenship.’

He added that the RSS is improving its coordination with other organisations in the country and in this process, the Sangh is strengthening the base of this country.