Better to live in present and see how future can be improved: Aaditya Thackeray on row over Dinesh Gundu Rao's claim

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray said, "I think saying these things at this point in time doesn't make any sense. All the great people have done what they needed to and have shown us. They must be watching us - what we are doing for this country and what path we are taking. It's better to live in present and see towards the future and how can we improve that instead of living in the past."

Earlier Dinesh Gundu Rao on Wednesday said that Vinayak Savarkar's fundamentalist ideology was very different from the Indian culture, despite him being a nationalist and that it wouldn't be Savarkar's argument but Mahatma Gandhi's that should win in the country.

Speaking at a book launch of the Kannada version of "Gandhi's Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India" by journalist Dhirendra K. Jha, Rao said, "If we can say with a discussion that Savarkar wins, that's not right; he was a non-vegetarian eater, and he wasn't against cow slaughter; he was a Chitpavan brahmin. Savarkar was modernist in that way but his fundamental thinking was different. Some people said he used to eat beef and he was openly propagating eating beef, so that thinking is different. But Gandhiji had a lot of belief in Hinduism and was conservative in that but his actions were different because he was democratic in that way."

He also came down on Muhammad Ali Jinnah and said that despite Jinnah being a "hardcore Islamic believer," he used to eat pork. He also said that Jinnah was not a fundamentalist and just wanted to hold a high position in the government and also called for a separate nation.

He reiterated that the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and other right-wing groups were trying to build on fundamentalism and that the populous needed to be socially and politically aware to understand these. (ANI)