Pranav Mukerjee surprised his opponents and well wishers by his progressive speech at the RSS headquarter in Nagpur

The former president of India Pranav Mukerjee has today formally proved that though he has in public view retired as an active politician, particularly after holding the top slot as the constitutional head of the largest democracy of the world but he is still an intelligent and shrewd politician who possesed the guts to go to the RSS headquarter in Nagpur despite so much of criticism by the Congressmen and his own daughter (who tried her best to stop her father requesting for resconsidering his decision) and surprise one and all by his entirely progressive speech except saluting the RSS founder Hegdewar and pronouncing him as the real son of mother India.

He though politely, but unambiguously conveyed to RSS that it is not religion-based dogma but secularism that is the way forward for co-existence. Now, those who doubted his motives should hide. He ultimately proved that a matured and veteran leader like him has lost neither his brilliance nor his commitment to Nehruvian conviction.

It’s an open fact that Pranav Da had more than five decades of association in the Congress Party right from the days of Jawahar Lal Nehru till now. He had been in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet and continued to be a union minister during every Congress government holding significant portofolios of Industry and Finance apart from being the important advisor and fatherly figure to Rajiv, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

An eminent economist and a veteran blotless Congressman Pranab Da had become so popular, acceptable and significant in the Congress Party that he was being foreseen as a possible material for prime ministership and political analysts say that it was Congress Party high command’s circumstantial compulson to install him as the President which perhaps Pranab Da also knows.

While Pranab Da was the President, his relations with prime minister Narendra Modi had been extremely cordial and the latter had always held him in extremely high esteem apreciating and lauding him publicly. At times while he was the president, it was never felt that he was ever a Congressmen keeping in view his closeness and extremely cordial relations with prime minister Modi and the BJP led NDA government.

His latest acceptance of the RSS invitation and his subsequent address at the Saffron headquarter in Nagpur rattled all the progressive forces and the Congress in particular initially, who raised lot of objections including the ex president’s own daughter who is in Congress saying that he ( Pranav Da) should give up the idea of going there as whatever he will utter would be wrongly and in a biased manner propagated by the RSS and BJP to its full advantage in media and social networking sites to derive maximum political advantage. But Pranav Da never relented and instead went ahead to address the RSS session.

But when he spoke there his every sentence and word turned the tables upside down. Those who were thinking that Pranav Da will be soft on the RSS agenda were badly mistaken and would be repenting on their criticism of Pranav Da’s decision.

A highly experienced former president who had been with stalwarts like Indira Gandhi as her close confidante and Rajiv, Sonia and Rahul’s trusted political leuitenant as union minister and senior party leader for several decades, finally proved his credentials as a secular leader standing credible for anything that’s good and constructive for a strong, cohesive, secular and pluralistic India.

Pranav Da by his impressive speech killed two birds with a stone. One, he silenced his ardent critics within the Congress party and in the anti BJP opposition camp, who were thinking that the former President is soft towards BJP n RSS and second, the RSS and BJP who were too confidently banking on Pranav Da’s trust thinking that by visiting Nagpur he would perhaps toe the saffron party line, which he never did and amused religious bigots.

In nutshell the follwing were Pranav Da’s main points of his speech considered to be more for the nation’s good than the good of any party. His speech was also a direct message to the RSS to give up its squeezed thinking on one religion and ideology and rather embrace secularism and a pluraristic society including tolerance.

In nutshell Pranav Mukerjee’s speech at RSS headquarter was:
I believe in engagement and dialogue.
Political differences can exist.
Diversity is our strength.
Our nation and nationalism is inclusive.
Tolerance remains our strength.
Soul of liberalism lives in pluralism.
Nationalism and pluralism go hand in hand.
Pluralism must be celebrated.