PANAJI
The all-India Hindu Rashtra convention opened at Ramnathi in Ponda on Sunday with the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (JGS) national guide Charudatta Pingale giving a call for Hindus to become "active" to ensure a 'Hindu Rashtra" by 2025.
Citing the violence witnessed across the country last week in the ongoing controversy over the insults to Prophet Mohammed by BJP spokespersons, Pingale said, it was all the more reason to fight for the cause of 'Hindu Rashtra' till the entire governance system is favourable to interest of Hindus.
Pingale in his address at the inaugural function also dwelt on the ongoing controversy at Varanasi over the Gyanvapi Mosque and the Karnataka hijab row even as he alleged that an 'anti-Hindu alliance' was currently operating in India.
More than 225 delegates from India and abroad are attending the convention which will go on until June 18.
Among the delegates is Hari Shankar Jain, the lawyer who is representing the Hindu side in the legal dispute over the Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi.
Jain told a media channel that in Goa too there are sites which were formerly temples but destroyed during the Portuguese colonial rule which Hindus have a right to legally reclaim.
The issue got currency in Goa recently when Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced a scheme for restoration of Hindu temples destroyed by the Portuguese through the department of Archives and Archeology and earmarked a Rs 20 crore budgetary provision.
