'No Room for Bhagwat': Interfaith group blasts Hindutva leader's upcoming MSG speech
NEW YORK (RNS) — A coalition of faith leaders and religious advocates gathered at New York’s City Hall on Tuesday (Aug. 25) to denounce the upcoming visit of Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) based in India.
Brad Lander, a New York Democratic Party nominee for Congress and former New York City comptroller, denounced what he described as an exclusionary and discriminatory ideology.
“There is no room for Mohan Bhagwat and RSS hatred in our city,” he said, adding the organization “fomented violence and promoted hatred against Muslims, against Sikhs, against Dalits, against Christians.”
The press conference, organized by the progressive advocacy organization Hindus for Human Rights, included speakers from the Indian American Muslim Council, the Interfaith Center of New York, Riverside Church and the New York State Council of Churches.
Bhagwat, chief of the RSS since 2009, is expected to address 5,000 Hindu Americans at Madison Square Garden on Saturday (Aug. 29). His visit has prompted outcry in the U.S., including from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Meanwhile, some Hindu American organizations have accused Bhagwat’s critics of leveraging opposition to Hindu nationalism, also called Hindutva, to spew anti-Hindu hate.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat addresses students during an India International Movement to Unite Nations (IIMUN) event in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Founded in 1925 during British colonial rule, the RSS promotes a vision of India as a Hindu-first nation and describes itself as a cultural and social movement dedicated to strengthening Hindu society. The ideology also emerged as a response to the continent’s long history of Muslim conquests, which the RSS has presented as a period of Hindu subjugation. Its members formed India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the organization has survived multiple bans to now serve as an ideological mentor and launching pad for several high-ranking politicians in the party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Human rights groups have accused the RSS and BJP of orchestrating decades of violence against minorities in India, a claim the RSS has repeatedly denied, though their philosophy paints Muslim and Christian Indians as foreigners. Since Modi’s election in 2014, human rights organizations and watchdog groups have documented a sharp rise in state-sanctioned discrimination, hate speech and vigilante-led violence targeting religious minorities and critics in India.
Bhagwat rarely addresses American Hindus and hasn’t visited the country since 2018, when he attended the World Hindu Congress in Chicago.
The “Universal Oneness Celebration,” which will mark the RSS centenary, promises to emulate Sanskrit principles of unity and family. The rally is supported by 135 Hindu American organizations and is expected to draw temple representatives, yoga organizations and cultural groups. Bhagwat is then expected to attend two more private events in New York before heading to Canada.
American Hindus for Dialogue, which organized the event, addressed the outcry sparked by Bhagwat’s visit in a press release.
The RSS “has also played a prominent and, at times, debated role in India’s modern history, making Dr. Bhagwat a figure of considerable interest to observers, supporters and critics alike. His New York remarks will offer a direct opportunity to hear his perspective on the unity theme anchoring this year’s program,” the organization wrote.
Members of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during an event in Bhopal, India, in 2016. The RSS, parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, combines Hindu religious education with self-defense exercises. (Photo by Suyash Dwivedi/Wikipedia/Creative Commons)
Asif Mahmood, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) who was born in Pakistan, condemned Bhagwat’s U.S. visit in a statement posted on the organization’s X account.
“India’s PM Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an Indian umbrella organization whose sub-groups have perpetrated attacks on religious minorities, incl. Christians & Muslims,” he wrote in the post.
His colleague, Commissioner Gene Mills, also decried Bhagwat’s visit and urged American leaders not to receive him. His statement linked to the commission’s recent report, which found RSS members responsible for and tolerant of religious freedom violations. The report cited violent acts committed by Hindu nationalist mobs against Christians and Muslims. For example, in June, a Hindu nationalist mob attacked 20 Christian families in the state of Odisha after they refused to convert to Hinduism. The attacks, which did not prompt police intervention, left eight people injured and hospitalized.
“RSS leaders, even when affiliated with the Indian gov’t, should not be honored with high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies. Instead, the USG (U.S. government) should focus on imposing sanctions on RSS members found responsible for FoRB (freedom of religion and belief) violations,” wrote Mills in an X post.
In its annual report, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. freeze the assets of RSS members and bar them from entering the country “for their responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom.” It also urged the government to designate India a “country of particular concern” for engaging in and tolerating religious freedom violations.
USCIRF has repeatedly rung the alarm about India’s turn to Hindu nationalism. In November 2025, it raised concerns that Modi’s BJP was enforcing policies aligned with Hindutva ideology, which have led to “disenfranchising members of India’s religious minority communities.” In recent years, BJP-majority states, such as Gujarat and Haryana, have introduced or strengthened laws criminalizing conversions to other faiths with prison sentences.
In response, the U.S.-based Hindu Policy Research and Advocacy Collective (HinduPACT) condemned USCIRF’s opposition to Bhagwat’s visit.
“USCIRF has disgraced its mandate. When its chair speaks about India and the RSS, he sounds less like the head of a pluralistic American commission and more like an advocate for a hardened anti-Hindu narrative,” wrote HinduPACT founder Ajay Shah. “Mohan Bhagwat leads one of the world’s most consequential Hindu organizations. He should not be met with slander scripted by … groups that have made a habit of treating Hindu self-assertion as extremism.”
At the press conference, Lander, who is Jewish, said he felt compelled to stand in solidarity with Hindu organizers denouncing Hindutva’s weaponization of Hinduism and compared it to his denouncement of the devastation caused by Israel’s war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
Similar weaponization happened around the world, he said, adding, “We see it in settler violence in the West Bank, and in genocide in Gaza, and we see it in what Hindutva is doing.”
A group with participants from an array of religions protests an upcoming visit of Mohan Bhagwat at City Hall on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in New York City. (RNS photo/Fiona André)
Danielle Williams, an organizer with the Interfaith Center of New York, denounced Madison Square Garden for hosting the event, saying it wasn’t “the first time that Madison Square Garden has hosted fascists, hate and supremacy,” alluding to the pro-Nazi rally held in the arena in 1939. Modi also spoke at the venue in 2014.
Williams likened the anti-Hindutva advocacy to criticism of Christian nationalism in the U.S.
“These movements are not the same; they come from different religions, histories, and political contexts,” she said. “But we know that the danger of any ideology that says one religious identity should oppress others — that is not religious freedom.”
Amin Zama, associate director of the Indian American Muslim Council, called on the State Department to deny Bhagwat’s visa to prevent his visit. “We are here to say clearly that New York must not become a stage for normalizing fascist and exclusionary politics,” he said.
The founder of the Sikh Council NY, Japneet Singh, called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian parents, to condemn Bhagwat’s visit as firmly as he denounced that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In late July, the mayor called Netanyahu a “war criminal” and acknowledged that he couldn’t enforce an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against him for crimes against humanity committed in the Israel-Hamas war.
“If you believed Modi’s record demanded that you speak out, then how can New York remain silent when the ideological organization that helped shape the political worldview behind Modi is bringing its leader to our city,” Singh said.
During his campaign, Mamdani criticized Modi and said he wouldn’t appear at a press conference next to him. Mamdani pointed to the 2002 massacre of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, when Modi served as the state’s chief minister, and noted his father’s family were Gujarati Muslims.
Saturday’s event will also coincide with the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan, which falls on Friday (Aug. 28) and celebrates the loving bond between brothers and sisters.
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