A visit by India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to the United States this week is being opposed by many activists, politicians and human rights groups in New York. Bhagwat is scheduled to speak on Saturday at an event called the “Universal Oneness Celebration” at Madison Square Garden in New York, and is expected to draw more than 5,000 attendees, including multifaith leaders. But while the event is being billed as an event for unity, the RSS – a Hindu majoritarian front that is the parent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – has repeatedly faced accusations back in India of contributing to the persecution of religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told local media on Tuesday that he does not support the upcoming event and called the RSS’s ideology “exclusionary.” Many human rights groups in the US, such as Hindus for Human Rights, have said in a statement that “Mohan Bhagwat does not represent Hindus.” The principal organiser of Saturday’s event is a US-based non-profit group called American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (AHEAD) Forum, which argues on its website that it seeks to promote intercultural understanding. But the website itself offers no details of those behind the group. A deeper look at the group’s founding and registration documents, however, sheds light on its leaders – and their deep links to the RSS, which has long advocated for a Hindu-first vision for India, a country that has otherwise, through its millennia-long history, been home to people from many faiths.
So what is AHEAD Forum and who are the organisers of Bhagwat’s New York event? The event, organised by AHEAD Forum, will take place from on Saturday 2:00pm to 15:30pm local time (19:00- ) in Madison Square Garden in New York. According to AHEAD’s social media platforms, the event called “Universal Oneness Celebration” seeks to celebrate “diversity, dialogue, and the timeless Indian philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.” Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is a Sanskrit phrase which translates to “the world is one family.” India’s RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been invited as the event’s keynote speaker and comes more than a year after the RSS celebrated 100 years since its founding in 1925.
Leaders from other faiths are also expected to attend. But Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor at the University of Delhi who writes literary and cultural criticism, told Al Jazeera that the “unity” advertisements for the event refer to “Hindu unity”. It’s also about Hindu unity against Muslims and Christians,” he said.
The RSS is a right-wing Hindu volunteer organisation founded in 1925 by physician and Hindu nationalist Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur, modern-day Maharashtra. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, sometimes called the Sangh for short, is Hindi for National Volunteer Organisation. The RSS works across society, operating schools, hospitals, magazines and publishing houses, to advocate for the idea of Hindutva, a Hindu supremacist idea that aims to turn India from a constitutionally secular state into a Hindu one.
It describes itself as a “Hindu-centric civilisational, cultural movement” that aims to “carry the nation to the pinnacle of glory” and is often described as the ideological mothership of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the RSS has also been banned in India several times, including in 1948 after a former member assassinated independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. Currently, the RSS leads a network of more than 2,500 right-wing Hindu organisations called the Sangh Parivar, Hindi for “RSS family”.
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