Last Thursday, while inaugurating a charitable hospital in the Sinhagad area of Pune, the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari recited an old incident wherein he once told Mr Ratan Tata that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) doesn't discriminate based on religion. The minister's anecdote was from the time when he was a minister in the Shiv Sena – BJP alliance government in Maharashtra.

Narrating the old incident, Gadkari said, "A hospital named after late RSS chief KB Hedgewar was being inaugurated in Aurangabad. I was a minister in the state government then. A senior RSS official expressed his wish that the hospital be inaugurated by Mr Ratan Tata, and asked me to help him".

"The senior RSS official later contacted Mr Tata and cited the contributions of Tata Cancer Hospital in providing cancer care to the poor in the country, which helped him to persuade Mr Tata to agree to inaugurate the hospital", Gadkari further said.

Explaining the incident further, Gadkari said, "when Mr Tata reached the hospital on the inauguration day, he asked if the hospital was only for the people from the Hindu community, to which I replied, 'why do you think so'. Mr Tata immediately answered, 'because it belongs to the RSS'. Replying to him I said that the hospital is for all communities, and no such thing (discrimination based on religion) happens in the RSS".

"I then explained several things to Mr Tata which later made him very happy", Gadkari added in his narration about the old incident.

(AS/PTI)

Keywords: Union Minister, Nitin Gadkari, Ratan Tata, Tata, Maharashtra, RSS, BJP, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Discrimination, Pune, Hospital, Inauguration.