Politics of hate and the mask of inclusiveness: Mohan Bhagwat in Madison Square

By Ram Puniyani* 

The Sarsanghchalak (Chief) of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, has undertaken a tour of three countries abroad. The first stop was the United States, where, apart from a few other engagements, his major event was to address a gathering at Madison Square Garden in New York. It was expected that over 5,000 people would attend. The stated objective of the visit was to dispel misconceptions about the RSS, engage in dialogue, and spread a message of universal oneness.

Before the meeting, huge protests broke out, involving nearly 61 human rights organizations that highlighted the hate politics of the RSS combine, the Sangh Parivar. The protesters pointed to writings from the RSS stable that praise Hitler for the genocide of Jews and recommend this method of nation-building for Hindu nationalists. The protesters also held banners noting that RSS members had killed Mahatma Gandhi. Even the Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, a person of Indian origin, criticized the RSS and expressed his displeasure with the event, while noting his inability to stop it. He said that the India in which he was raised — he is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair — respected diversity, while today India has become an intolerant state. Many Hindu organizations, alongside other human rights advocates, also joined the protests against Bhagwat.

Bhagwat's meeting was organized by more than 200 organizations, mainly ones working on identity issues. At the meeting, Bhagwat tried to present himself as a liberal, obscuring his politics of exclusion. He stated that diversity is "a decoration of our innate unity" and that Hindus who want Muslims out of India would cease to be Hindu. Noble words — but how should we judge a person or an organization? By their words, or by their deeds?

Unity in diversity, syncretism, and the deeper integration of people irrespective of religion have been hallmarks of India's past. During the freedom movement, guided by the ideals of Bhagat Singh, the values of Ambedkar, and the fraternity of Gandhi, people struggled for independence from British rule. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha on one side, and the Muslim League on the other, remained aloof from this integrative process. It was the national movement for freedom that grounded itself in liberty, equality, and fraternity.

During this period, the RSS not only remained aloof from the process of nation-building but actively spread hatred against Muslims (and later against Christians as well) and assisted British rulers in various ways. The hatred it spread through its shakhas, schools, and media — and later social media — fueled communal violence in which Muslims were the primary victims. While Muslim and Hindu communalism had been roughly evenly matched under British rule, after independence it was RSS-driven communalism that came to dominate, deepening the divide between the two major communities. This hatred fed the violence against Muslims in Mumbai in 1993, Gujarat in 2002, Muzaffarnagar in 2013, and Delhi in 2019.

Gujarat also revealed its politics in stark terms through the case of Bilkis Bano: a pregnant Muslim woman was gang-raped, and the convicted perpetrators were later released after serving only part of their sentences — a telling measure of respect for women. The cow protection movement led to the lynching of Muslims such as Akhlaq and Rakbar Khan, as well as Dalits; the flogging of Dalits in Una remains a stark reminder of the RSS's attitude toward Dalit communities.

From the 1980s onward, Christians also came under attack. The burning alive of the missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons was described by then-President K.R. Narayanan as belonging among the blackest deeds in human history. The Kandhamal violence further exposed the RSS's promotion of the idea that Christianity is a "foreign religion." Its rhetoric against Muslims and Christians intensified over the past decade, as its political arm has governed at the center for more than 12 years.

In recent years, attacks on prayer meetings have also increased. While Muslims have been largely marginalized politically, it is telling that the BJP's roughly 1,000 sitting MPs and MLAs include not a single Muslim — a measure of Bhagwat's actual regard for Muslims in India. In 2025, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent, bipartisan federal body created by Congress to monitor religious freedom abroad, recommended that the U.S. government designate India a "country of particular concern." USCIRF also recommended targeted sanctions against individuals and entities, including the RSS, such as asset freezes and entry restrictions. More recently, USCIRF officials cautioned against extending high-level meetings and diplomatic courtesies to Bhagwat and other RSS leaders. Several human rights and advocacy organizations have called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deny or revoke Bhagwat's U.S. visa.

This record stands at odds with the RSS's claims of respecting diversity, and it shows how carefully Bhagwat works to obscure that reality. The language of diversity functions as a decoy meant to mislead the world — but will the world be misled in an era of instant information and growing attention to human rights? While the RSS has more than 2,500 affiliated organizations abroad, an ongoing investigation by Caravan magazine has also brought international scholars and activists into the conversation, documenting the realities faced by Muslims, Christians, Dalits, women, Adivasis, and workers in India.

It see ms the real aim of Bhagwat's visit was not to promote universal oneness but to whitewash the RSS's record in India. India's declining rank in international indices of religious freedom, freedom of expression, press freedom, hunger, and happiness has tracked closely with the rise of the RSS-BJP order. Bhagwat deserves a grim sort of credit for his skill in concealing hate politics — politics that flow directly from Hindu nationalist ideology.

His broader aim may be to strengthen the Hindu lobby in America and abroad, wrapped in a mask of diversity he wears with practiced ease. Peace in India requires fidelity to the Indian Constitution, which the RSS combine opposes. For global harmony, the surer foundation is the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. Invoking scripture in the age of the global village misses the point entirely — if anything, it reveals the real intent: Hindu supremacy.

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*Political commentator