A Hindu can never be fundamentalist, senior RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya said here Saturday.
Vaidya, general secretary (sar-karyawah) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was speaking at 'Devarshi Narad Jayanti Samaroh' organized by Vishva Samwad Kendra, an RSS wing, to felicitate journalists.
"The word 'kattar' has come from the English word fundamentalist. Some of our people also used it without thinking. There is this word (that some people use), 'kattar Hindu'. A Hindu cannot be kattar, because a Hindu can never be fundamentalist," Vaidya said.
Terms such as Hindu fundamentalist were coined by "those opposing Hindutva and forces working to break the nation," the RSS leader claimed.
"Sometimes the swayamsevaks (volunteers) of the Sangh are also called kattar. Swayamsevaks can never be kattar," he said.
Quoting from the book "The way of Indian life" by Sister Nivedita, Vaidya said Bruno (16th-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno) was the first to propose that Sun is stable and Earth revolves around it, but he was burnt alive for blasphemy, while astronomer Galileo was jailed (for similar reasons).
"Sister Nivedita says if Bruno had been in Bharat, he would not have been set on fire, Galileo would not have been jailed and Jesus Christ, says one school of thought, would not have been crucified (had he been in India). Whether he would have got followers or not is another matter," the RSS leader added.