What will Pranab say at RSS event? De-coding his last speech as President of India

There has been a lot of speculation around what Pranab Mukherjee would speak at the RSS event to be held at Nagpur today. The Congress in particular which had tried to dissuade him would watch the event with nervousness.

In the midst of all the speculation came a statement from Pranab's daughter that the speech would be forgotten, but the visuals would remain. Sharmistha Mukherjee took to Twitter and hoped the former president would realise how the BJP's "dirty tricks department" works and said that with his visit, he was giving the BJP and RSS "full handle to plant false stories". She was reacting to rumours that she would be joining the BJP.

"Hope @CitiznMukherjee now realises from todays' incident, how BJP dirty tricks dept operates. Even RSS wouldn't believe that u r going 2 endorse its views in ur speech. But the speech will be forgotten, visuals will remain & those will be circulated with fake statements (sic)," she tweeted.

Amidst all the speculations, it would be interesting to see what he would say at the programme. One could get some clues from his last speech as President of India. Before laying down office, Mukherjee had expressed concern over the increasing violence. He said that darkness, fear and mistrust was at the heart of the violence and added that power of non-violence has to be resurrected to build a caring society so that the participation of all is ensured.

"The multiplicity in culture, faith and language is what makes India special. We derive our strength from tolerance. It has been part of our collective consciousness for centuries. There are divergent strands in public discourse. We may argue, we may agree or we may not agree.

"But we cannot deny the essential prevalence of multiplicity of opinion. Otherwise, a fundamental character of our thought process will wither away," he had also said.