Nationalism is biggest source of inspiration for me: LK Advani

NEW DELHI: Nationalism is the biggest source of inspiration for me, senior BJP leader L K Advani today said as he provided a brief glimpse of how his feelings were shaped after he as a student growing up in pre-independence India joined RSS at the age of 14 years.

"During my entire life, if something has inspired me the most that has been nationalism. I got this feeling first when I was in school and college and became an RSS volunteer at the age of 14," he said.

He said that at that time the feeling was that India should become independent. He added he was hurt when he saw that in the trains all the removable equipment in trains had marked on them "stolen from the GIP."

Speaking at a book release function, he said the assumption was the people in India were thieves and whoever picked up the stuff would always have it marked that it belonged to the railways.

He said he was also upset when he went through books like Catherine Mayo's book 'Mother India' which even Mahatama Gandhi had termed as a "gutter inspector's report."

Advani said he also read all the books written as rebuttals that were written to Mayo's book. The BJP veteran said though he had released numerous books, he felt especially happy that very learned people had come together to write a history of ancient India.

Senior journalist Arun Shourie said people should not be too dependant on institutions and added that even when there was no support of institutions, schoarly work was possible.

RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy and former Director of the Intelligence Bureau Ajit Doval were among those present.