BHOPAL: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that people of Pakistan are not happy after more than seven decades of independence and they now believe the partition of India was a mistake.

He also said ‘Akhand Bharat’ was true but divided Bharat was a “nightmare”.

Bhagwat was speaking on Friday at a function to mark the birth centenary of revolutionary and freedom fighter Hemu Kalani.

Underlining the need to build a new India, the RSS chief said, “’Akhand Bharat’ (a concept of the country with all its ancient parts that are currently in modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tibet unified) is true but divided Bharat was a nightmare.”

“It was Bharat before 1947. Are those who broke off from Bharat due to their stubbornness still happy? There is pain out there,” he said in an apparent reference to Pakistan, adding there was happiness in India. Bhagwat underscored the fact that India did not belong to a culture that calls for attacks on others.

“I do not mean to say Bharat should attack Pakistan. Not at all. We don’t belong to that culture that calls for attack on others,” he said.

“We are from the culture that gives a befitting reply in self-defence,” Bhagwat said, apparently referring to the surgical strikes on terror camps in that country, adding, “We do it and we will keep doing it.”

“People of Pakistan are now saying the division of Bharat was a mistake. All are saying it was a mistake,” he asserted.

Hailing the Sindhi community, most of whom arrived here during the partition, the RSS chief said they had come “from that Bharat to this Bharat for the sake of your rich Sindhu culture and values”.