Worry about your ISIS, BJP general secretary tells Al Jazeera journalist

Senior BJP leader Ram Madhav has said India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will reunite one day to create what he called Akhand Bharat or an Undivided India.

Responding to a statement made earlier this year, in which he said India was “a Hindu country”, Madhav explained, “It’s a land where a particular way of life, a particular culture or civilization is practiced”.

To which Hasan said, “We’re anxious because the rest of the world cannot risk a nuclear war because you two countries can’t settle it”.

A leading official from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) believes that through “popular goodwill”, parts of India that were separated 60 years ago will come together.

For his latest interview, Hasan went Head to Head with Ram Madhav, National General Secretary of the BJP and former member of the National Executive of the RSS at the Oxford Union, and the interview has already made headlines. However Madav said that this will not happen through any war but by popular consent.

He, however, clarified that it “does not mean we wage war on any country… we annex any country”.

“Akhand Bharat is a cultural concept not a political one, it is cultural because the division of Indian and Pakistan was based on religion, once people in Pakistan accept pre-Islamic history, culture and intellectual legacy of India then that cultural unity would be possible”, RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha told ANI.

Questions about eminent personalities returning their awards citing rising cases of intolerance to rising cases of communal violence kick-started the heated interview.

Mehdi Hasan, the Al Jazeera anchor, was visibly shocked and repeated “my ISIS”, thrice.

Madhav, who was Sangathan Mantri, was deputed to the BJP after the general elections previous year.