Pune: Country’s leading industrialist Ratan Tata had once asked Union Minister Nitin Gadkari to tell him if a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-linked hospital was meant only for Hindus.
Replying to it, Gadkari told Ratan Tata that the RSS does not discriminate on the basis of religion. The senior BJP leader revealed all this after inaugurating a charitable hospital in the Sinhagad area here.
Speaking on the occasion, Gadkari recalled a past incident when he was a minister in the Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra.
"A hospital named for late RSS chief KB Hedgewar was being inaugurated in Aurangabad. I was a minister in the state government then. A senior RSS functionary expressed a wish that the hospital be inaugurated by Ratan Tata, and asked me to help," Gadkari said.
He then contacted Tata and persuaded him to inaugurate the hospital citing Tata Cancer Hospital's contribution to providing cancer care to the poor in the country, he said.
"Upon reaching the hospital, Tata asked if the hospital is only for people from the Hindu community. I asked him 'why do you think so'. He immediately replied, 'because it belongs to the RSS'.
"I told him that the hospital is for all communities, and no such thing (discrimination on the basis of religion) happens in the RSS," the Union Minister said. Gadkari then explained several other things about RSS functioning to Ratan Tata and he the industrialist eventually "became very happy".
(With PTI Inputs)
