Ramdev's aide who met Hafiz Saeed a global affairs expert

Ved Pratap Vaidik, who courted controversy by meeting Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan, is a close aide of yoga guru Ramdev and has worked for the propagation of Hindi.

The 69-year-old Vaidik is a columnist and political analyst with an interest in international politics.

He was founder editor of Hindi news agency Bhasha and worked there 1986-95.

Born Dec 30, 1944, in Indore, Vaidik did his Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 1971.

The website www.vpvaidik.com says Vaidik knows Russian, Persian, English, Sanskrit, Hindi and several Indian languages, and personally knows presidents and prime ministers of many countries.

As a Ph.D. student at the School of International Studies in JNU, Vaidik insisted on writing his thesis in Hindi, which led to his expulsion from the school but evoked nationwide response after the issue was raised in parliament.

The website says Vaidik won the right for all Indian languages to be the medium of expression at the highest academic level.

For the past many years, Vaidik has been associated with Ramdev, who also supports propagation of Hindi.

Vaidik said he met Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed in Lahore July 2 and had an hour-long chat with him in his capacity as a journalist.