Kolkata: Muslims in India must realise that their forefathers were Hindus who converted to Islam, said Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), speaking in Kolkata on Tuesday.

Referring to a conversation with a friend, a Muslim scholar whom he did not name, Bhagwat said he was opposed to the report of the Sachar Committee because of the lineage of a vast majority of Indian Muslims.

Then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2005 formed a commission under Rajinder Sachar, former chief justice of Delhi high court, to assess the social and economic conditions of Indian Muslims.

Bhagwat had opposed its recommendations.

Referring to his Muslim friend, who Bhagwat said now edits a newspaper, the RSS chief said that his friend appreciated the Hindu lineage of Indian Muslims, but the community he represented largely did not.

He maintained that India should conceptually be seen as a Hindu nation, where people from other faiths had come and ruled intermittently, sometimes for centuries, and in the process strengthened the nation and its people. And following that tradition, it is important that Indians bury internal feuds of any nature and come together for nation-building, he added.

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