The Hindu right in trouble

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HAVING prospered abroad as an unbridled organisation flaunting different names and profiles for decades, the RSS seems to be in trouble in western cities and townships where unusual rage is surfacing at its documented hatred of Muslims and Christians. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s visit to the US and Canada has come at a fraught time in the organisation’s global and domestic trajectory. The timing of this change in attitude coincides with a youth movement questioning the ideological fundamentals of the Modi government at home and decline of Israel as a morally tenable entity in the comity of nations. Israel’s fondness for India’s right-wing Hindu establishment has collaterally damaged India’s reputation as an old comrade in much of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Not quite flattering also is the reality of Pakistan’s rise as a widely wooed global partner with India painting itself into a diplomatic corner. When a frustrated Donald Trump yelled at Israel for becoming friendless and hated by everyone, Benjamin Netanyahu smiled back, saying he still had India for a friend. The backhanded compliment isn’t lost on the world at large. Where Pakistan is headed, India once claimed the high ground — the reliable friend ready to help untangle strategic and diplomatic knots world leaders needed to fix urgently. There was a time when leaders sought out India to intervene as an honest broker to wind down the traumatic Korean conflict, and they remained grateful that Nehru stepped in. There was a time when Indira Gandhi was urged by the Non-Aligned Movement to broker peace in the lacerating Iran-Iraq war. She dispatched senior diplomat Romesh Bhandari to placate the warring arch-foes as only a trusted Indian envoy could. And though the war eventually ended when a US warship shot down an Iranian Airbus packed with Dubai shoppers, India’s helping hand continued to be valued in the entire region. Today, the world may be interested in India’s lucrative market, but sans the respect India once commanded. There were Indian stowaways slinking out abroad even then, but they were never repatriated in handcuffs and fetters as Trump did with Indian citizens recently, even though Narendra Modi had canvassed support for his re-election in 2020. The RSS prides itself as a shadowy unregistered paramilitary body, whereas even the Nazis were a registered party. The RSS prides itself as a shadowy unregistered paramilitary body, whereas even the Nazis were a registered party. Critics point to its opaque financial resources at home and abroad. Those resources may have come under a cloud on two fronts. The opposition in India is demanding the group’s registration amid calls for transparency, which the RSS is assiduously resisting. Abroad, Trump has increased the visa fee to impossible figures for IT professionals to seek, and IT professionals are known to be the mainstay of RSS sympathisers and its finances in the US. How has the RSS stayed popular among the Indian diaspora was a question that a huge number of protesters in the US and Canada were asking ahead of and during Bhagwat’s visit. It rode piggyback with the powerful Israel lobby. But Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists are under attack from within the Democratic and Republican establishments with Zohran Mamdani and Tucker Carlson being the tip of the iceberg. The consequent decline of Israel’s prowess is not good news for the RSS. Bhagwat’s reportedly conciliatory tone during his New York meeting presaged a looming crisis for the group in its various avatars. At the public meeting, he claimed that Hindus who wish to see Muslims out of India would cease to be Hindus if they did so. The comments were borrowed from a brainstorming meeting he organised in Delhi in 2018. Did that stop the bloodcurdling assaults on Muslims and Christians or the Dalits from Hindutva zealots? No. Even as Bhagwat was in New York or preparing to get there, the ground reality in India defied his claims. A new law in Maharashtra was being unveiled for Christians visiting the church to fill out a form to say they were not being coerced to convert. Is there a similar law for those forced or lured to convert to Hinduism? Around then the decks were also being cleared to free the Hindutva fanatic from jail who had burnt alive the Australian priest and caregiver Graham Steines and his two sons in their jeep in 1990. Two faux Hindu gurus jailed for rape, with one sentenced also for murder, are enjoying paroles and furloughs at will, while intellectual dissenters like Umar Khalid are languishing in prison, with no sign of a trial starting soon. Nehru used to say that the RSS was not a trustworthy organisation. Its leaders said one thing and did another. For example, the RSS distanced itself from Gandhi’s killer Godse but distributed sweets at the assassination, according to Sardar Patel. Modi, an RSS man did one better. He freed Samjhauta Express terror bomb accused Sadhvi Pragya from jail, made her an MP and then watched her praising Godse as a hero for killing Gandhi. Bhagwat reportedly told the Delhi brainstorming that some parts of former RSS chief Golwalkar’s book needed to be discarded. Let’s check it out. In Chapter V of his book We or Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalkar says: “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, ie, of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights.” What else is being pursued over the last 12-plus years? If Bhagwat is trying to rewrite the Golwalkar book, it indicates two possibilities. One, the RSS has gone fundamentally at loggerheads with the Modi government. Two, the RSS is in serious trouble. The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. jawednaqvi@gmail.com Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2026

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