Praveen Togadia, a qualified cancer surgeon, is the International General Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), a body established in 1964 that is dedicated to protecting interests of the Hindu community in India.

Hailing from the Indian state of Gujarat, he is one of VHP's most forceful but controversial orators, highlighting issues that the VHP says Hindus of India are facing in their own homeland:

1. Indian brand of Marxism-inspired secularism that discriminates against the Hindus,

2. the plight of the Kashmiri Hindus who have been ethnicially cleansed by Muslim militants and are living in refugee camps in Delhi,

3. school textbooks written by leftist/communist Indian historians with an anti-Hindu animus,

4. appeasement of Muslims by Indian government and granting to them more rights than the Hindu majority enjoys (for example, the right to administer educational institutions of their choice),

5. manipulation of Muslim community as a voting block by Indian politicians (like the Indian government granting subsidy on air travel to Muslims for peforming Haj),

6. agressive conversion activity by Christian missionaries in remote tribal areas using inducement or fraud,

7. and other matters where the Indian secular state is precieved by VHP to be hostile to the Hindus.

(VHP, the organization he heads, defines as "Hindu'" all people who believe in, respect or follow the eternal values of life - ethical and spiritual -

Togadia is a proponent of militant Hindutva -- use of street violence, if need be, in defense of Hindus and promotion of Hindu religion. He has been jailed many times for distributing small tridents to Hindu youth supposedly for their protection. He has also been denied entry to many Indian cities on law and order grounds.

Togadia is reviled by Indian minorities (Muslims and Christians), the leftists and communists, and quiet a few Hindus who have been brought up on Westernized education and secular values. They label him as a hate-monger inciting violence against them and trying to get India declared as Hindu state.

According to Togadia, his vision of India is that of an officially Hindu, militarily strong state that gives equal rights to every religion, just like the United Kingdom is officially a Christian country but with strong secular values and equal rights to minorities. He argues that Hindus comprise the only religious community in the world that doesn't have state power to back it.

His strength mainly comes from a section of the Hindus who draw comfort from the fact that he raises issues about Hindu community that are otherwise difficult to discuss in the politically correct atmosphere of Indian secularism.

Togadia is a Gujarati, and an oncologist by profession, running his own hospital in the city of Ayodhya.