Veteran Congress leader Vasant Sathe today wrote to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, explaining his statement supporting a ‘‘Hindu state’’ which he had made on Saturday at a function held to release the complete works of Veer Savarkar.In the presence of PM A.B. Vajpayee, Deputy PM L.K. Advani and RSS sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudershan, Sathe had said there should be an amendment to the Constitution where the word Hindustan should be brought in along with India and Bharat ‘‘so all its inhabitants will be known as Hindus.’’Congress spokesperson Satyavrat Chaturvedi said an explanation was being sought from Sathe. Asked about the Congress position, he said: ‘‘How can Congress agree with this kind of thing?’’Sathe said, ‘‘Article 1 of the Constitution says India, that is Bharat, is a union of state. But the word India was derived by the Greeks from Indus, the river. It is also called Sindhu which is pronounced in Persian as Hindu. So the word Hindu was in existence even before Muslims arrived in this country in the 6th Century.’’‘‘When we are referring in the Constitution to India and Bharat, we must also say Hindustan. Then automatically, its connotation would be Indians from India, Bharatiya from Bharat and Hindus from Hindustan,’’ he said. ‘‘But the BJP use of the Hindu state is more religion-oriented. Going by Savarkar, everyone who resides in India would be a Hindu,’’ he added. This change, he said, will not affect the religious identity of a Muslim or Christian.
