(RNS) — This Saturday (Aug. 29), Mohan Bhagwat, chief of India’s Hindu nationalist organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is scheduled to give the keynote address at Madison Square Garden for an event celebrating “universal oneness.”
The event, hosted by the nonprofit American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (AHEAD) Forum, will feature musical performances and communal hymns and is expected to draw more than 5,000 spectators and over 100 groups affiliated with Hindu temples, yoga associations and cultural groups.
“Our job is to sit for a dialogue — mutual dialogue — to understand each other for the betterment of global humanity,” said Sudesh Agrawal, director of the AHEAD Forum. “Our earth is one.”
Priya Samant, the spokesperson for the Universal Oneness Celebration, agreed.
“It’s a celebration of our shared goals and our humanity,” she told RNS, adding that Bhagwat will share the stage with faith leaders from different religions, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Sikhism. “And oneness does not mean sameness. It means that we can work through our differences, and yet, be one big family.”
And yet, the event has sparked widespread backlash from a coalition of faith-based and secular organizations as well as elected officials. Critics argue that the idea of unity is a thin veneer and that Bhagwat represents an organization built from a vision of a Hindu-first India. They point to a documented rise in discrimination and violence against minorities in India since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), considered the political muscle of the RSS, gained power.
In the context of the RSS and its representatives, the idea of unity often only refers to Hindu unity, said Thomas Blom Hansen, a professor of South Asian studies and anthropology at Stanford who studies religious and political violence in India. “Anyone who talks about caste, who talks about communities, who talks about minorities — they are inherently divisive,” Hansen said.
Bhagwat’s visit kicks off an international tour to increase global outreach on the centennial of the RSS’s founding. He is scheduled for upcoming events in Canada and the United Kingdom.
The RSS was founded in 1925 as a male-only volunteer organization that held small local gatherings meant to cultivate shared Hindu identity amid British colonial rule and past Muslim conquests. The organization has since become a major force in Indian society, particularly as an ideological guide to the BJP.
“The BJP knows that they cannot win elections without the RSS,” Hansen said.
Bhagwat, 75, was born into a Marathi Brahmin family of RSS activists. He joined the organization full time in his 20s and climbed the ranks to become the organization’s chief in 2009. He now presides over millions of RSS members across the country and serves as a prominent figurehead.
Bhagwat himself has advocated for many controversial BJP policies promoted by the RSS, advising families to protect their Hindu daughters from “love jihad,” defending a citizenship amendment that favors non-Muslim immigration, defending “anti-conversion laws” that have resulted in mob attacks on churches, and labeling India a fundamentally Hindu nation. He has also praised the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on the site where a Hindu nationalist mob illegally razed a 16th century mosque and ensuing riots killed an estimated 2,000 people, mainly Muslims.
Two of AHEAD Forum’s previous initiatives involved book tours for Sachin Nanda and Ratan Sharda, who wrote about RSS history and principles.
The RSS has been banned three times in India. The first ban came in 1948 after an RSS affiliate assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian independence leader who advocated for religious harmony and a secular democracy.
The Indian government mandated that the RSS operate with transparency, but instead, “they branched out and created a whole range of different front organizations that are not formally affiliated with the RSS,” said Hansen. “It was a way of creating a sense of deniability.”
Ahead of Bhagwat’s speech, progressive platform Savera published a report alleging that the AHEAD Forum is a front for the U.S. wing of the RSS.
Agrawal responded that the AHEAD Forum is an independent 501(c)3 organization and “not prompted or promoted or guided by any other organization.”
Sunita Viswanath, executive director of the progressive nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights, has been working with a coalition of advocates to campaign for Madison Square Garden to cancel the event, urging individuals to call the venue and voice their opinion.
“As a progressive Hindu organization that’s working night and day to manifest a loving and inclusive interpretation of our faith, it’s very upsetting to see the same words and the same concepts, such as ‘oneness,’ being used by an organization and its leadership who very clearly represent the opposite,” Viswanath said.
Elected officials, including Democratic candidate for Congress Brad Lander and New York City Councilmembers Shahana Hanif and Lincoln Restler, have also spoken out against Bhagwat’s appearance in New York City. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s first Indian-American mayor and a Muslim, also said he opposed Bhagwat’s appearance but did not have the jurisdiction to cancel the event.
“The vision of India that I was taught by my family and the one that I grew up being very familiar with was of a pluralistic society, of a secular republic,” said Mamdani in a press conference. “It has been incredibly troubling to see the rise of a movement that is predicated on an exclusionary vision.”
Madison Square Garden representatives have told callers that venue management has limited authority to cancel private events.
Still, those opposed to Bhagwat’s visit will protest outside Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Viswanath expects hundreds of protesters will gather and voice their opposition to Bhagwat, the RSS and the Hindutva philosophies they embody.
“If we don’t stand up to religious supremacy and exclusively hateful ideologies,” she said, “we will not be fulfilling our responsibility as citizens of conscience, citizens of the countries that we live in and citizens of the world.”
Samant, on the other hand, said the event fills her with hope, stating that it is an opportunity for a diverse crowd to learn from Bhagwat’s experience leading a century-old organization.
“The RSS has done so much great work,” she said. “It’s like a masterclass.”