Mohan Bhagwat’s Message of Tolerance in America: The Questions the RSS Must Still Answer A Welcome Sentence—and an Unavoidable Question

On August 29, 2026, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat made a striking declaration before an American audience at the “One World One Humanity” gathering in New York: “If any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslim in Bharat, he will not remain Hindu.” He went further. A Hindu, he said, must recognize that different religious paths can lead toward the same goal and that every human being possesses dignity. Diversity, in Bhagwat’s formulation, should be “accepted, respected, and preserved.” Those are important words. They should not be dismissed merely because they came from the head of the RSS. Indeed, Indians who believe in coexistence should welcome them. But welcoming a declaration is different from suspending historical judgment. The appropriate response to Bhagwat is therefore neither applause nor reflexive denunciation. It is scrutiny. The question is not simply: What did Mohan Bhagwat say in New York? It is: How does what he said relate to what the organization he leads has taught, built, tolerated, influenced, and represented during the past century? That is the postmortem largely missing from celebratory coverage.

1. A Hundred-Year-Old Organization of Extraordinary Reach

The RSS was founded in Nagpur in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. A century later, it is difficult to describe it as merely another voluntary cultural association. Its own figures demonstrate the scale of the organization. In March 2025, the RSS reported that 83,129 daily shakhas were operating at 51,570 locations, along with 32,147 weekly and 12,091 monthly gatherings. Taken together, the organization reported activities at more than 127,000 recurring shakhas, milans and mandalis. The precise number of people who should be considered RSS “members” is harder to determine because the RSS does not maintain a conventional, publicly accessible membership roll. Published estimates of active volunteers vary considerably. Consequently, assertions that the RSS has exactly six million members should be treated cautiously. But the larger point does not depend upon whether the number is one million, six million or something in between. The RSS possesses extraordinary organizational reach. Its shakhas traditionally involve physical exercise, games, marching, ideological instruction, prayer and organizational discipline. It would be inaccurate to describe every shakha simply as a “military training camp.” But it would be equally misleading to portray the shakha as nothing more than a neighborhood cultural club. Physical discipline, ideological formation, group identity, and leadership development have been central to the RSS model. Over generations, this has created something much more consequential than an organization. It has created cadres.

2. The RSS Is Not the BJP—but the Relationship Is Real

One of the most important distinctions in discussing the RSS is also one of the most frequently abused. The RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party are legally separate organizations. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to say simply that the RSS “owns” or formally “runs” the BJP. But it would be equally inaccurate to pretend that they are unrelated institutions. Reuters describes the RSS as the ideological parent of the BJP. Academic research commissioned through the University of Birmingham and published by the British government examined the BJP as the RSS's “political offspring” and investigated the extensive organizational and ideological relationship between them. The broader network is usually referred to as the Sangh Parivar. It has included organizations operating in politics, education, religion, student activism, labor, tribal outreach, social service and other spheres. Human Rights Watch has described the BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal, and other organizations within this wider ideological ecosystem, while noting the RSS's central historical role. This structure gives the RSS an unusual form of influence. It does not have to contest elections under its own name to exercise political influence. It develops people. Those people enter institutions. Some become politicians. Others become organizers, teachers, activists, intellectuals, or leaders of affiliated or ideologically related organizations. The distinction between organizational separation and ideological connection therefore matters enormously.

3. The Accountability Paradox: Enormous Influence, Unusual Institutional Opacity

Here lies perhaps the most legitimate question critics can ask. An organization claiming such enormous national influence should ordinarily be expected to demonstrate equally impressive institutional transparency. Yet the RSS itself is not registered as a society, trust, political party, or conventional NGO. That fact has recently become the subject of renewed political controversy in India. This requires an important legal clarification. Being unregistered does not mean that the RSS is illegal. Indian law does not impose a universal requirement that every voluntary association must register itself. The RSS also cites court decisions and tax proceedings that recognize its existence and financial arrangements. A 1994 Patna High Court case, for example, concerned the tax treatment of Guru Dakshina received from swayamsevaks. Therefore, the serious criticism is not: “RSS is unregistered; therefore, RSS is unlawful.” That argument is too easy to defeat. The stronger question is: Should an organization of such extraordinary political and social influence voluntarily submit itself to disclosure standards proportionate to its power? Who are its formal members? What are its complete annual revenues? What are its assets? What organizations receive money from it? What organizations provide money to it? What are its consolidated expenditures? What financial relationships exist among organizations belonging to the Sangh ecosystem? Which officeholders possess decision-making authority? Which accounts are independently audited? And how much of this information can an ordinary Indian citizen examine? In June and again in August 2026, Karnataka minister Priyank Kharge publicly demanded precisely such information—including the RSS's legal status, assets, audited accounts and statutory disclosures. The RSS rejected the controversy as politically motivated and has maintained that it has nothing to hide. That dispute should not be settled by slogans. It should be settled by disclosure. If the RSS has nothing to conceal, comprehensive transparency would strengthen its case rather than weaken it.

4. The Historical Problem of Secrecy Is Not Newly Invented

This question has a remarkable historical precedent. After Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in 1948, the Government of India banned the RSS. The ban was eventually lifted in 1949. What is particularly relevant today is what the government demanded during that process. Historical records show that among the concerns raised by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's government were the need for a written constitution, more open functioning, commitment to constitutional methods, and explicit acceptance of India's national flag. Union Home Secretary H. V. R. Iyengar wrote in 1949 that explicit acceptance of the national flag was necessary to demonstrate that there were no reservations concerning allegiance to the Indian state. The RSS subsequently adopted a written constitution, and the ban was lifted. That history is important because it complicates simplistic arguments on both sides. It would be incorrect today to say that the RSS formally refuses allegiance to India's Constitution or national flag. Bhagwat himself has publicly stated that the RSS regards the Constitution as the country's consensus and respects the symbols of Indian freedom. But it is equally legitimate to remember that these very questions—constitutionalism, openness, organizational secrecy and the national flag—were serious enough that India's first government demanded clarification before permitting the RSS to resume unrestricted activity. The controversy is therefore historical, not imaginary.

5. The Ghost of Nathuram Godse Cannot Simply Be Wished Away

No examination of RSS history can avoid Nathuram Vinayak Godse, Gandhi's assassin. But here too, accuracy matters. Godse's relationship with the RSS remains historically contested in its precise chronology. The RSS has maintained that Godse had left the organization before assassinating Gandhi. Yet Godse's brother Gopal publicly disputed attempts to erase the family's RSS association, and scholarly literature has challenged the claim that Nathuram's connection with the RSS ended as neatly as the organization later suggested. A recent scholarly study in Modern Asian Studies, published by Cambridge University Press, describes Godse as having belonged to both the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and notes academic research arguing that he retained RSS membership, notwithstanding his later courtroom account. UCLA's South Asia scholarship similarly recounts the controversy, including Gopal Godse's insistence that the Godse brothers were members of the RSS. None of this establishes that the RSS as an organization ordered Gandhi's assassination. That distinction must be maintained. But neither does intellectual honesty permit Godse's RSS history simply to disappear. An organization is entitled to defend itself against accusations for which evidence is insufficient. It is not entitled to rewrite inconvenient history.  

6. Hindu Rashtra: What Exactly Does It Mean?

Bhagwat's New York statement raises another fundamental contradiction requiring explanation. If Muslims are equal members of India—and Bhagwat now says that anyone wishing to remove them cannot properly call himself Hindu—what exactly does the RSS mean when it simultaneously declares India a Hindu Rashtra? This is not a label imposed upon the RSS by its enemies. The RSS uses it itself. As recently as August 2025, its official website quoted Bhagwat declaring: “Bharat is Akhand (undivided) and a Hindu Rashtra.” The RSS argues that “Hindu Rashtra” is civilizational rather than theocratic and does not exclude Muslims, Christians, or other religious communities. Bhagwat has said that differences in modes of worship do not alter a shared civilizational identity. That explanation deserves to be reported. But it also deserves interrogation. India already possesses a constitutional identity. Its citizenship is not Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian citizenship. It is Indian citizenship. If “Hindu” merely means every person belonging to Indian civilization, why use a religiously charged word that hundreds of millions of Indians do not use to describe themselves? And more fundamentally: Who has the authority to tell an Indian Muslim that he is culturally Hindu whether he accepts the designation or not? Bhagwat himself said in 2025: “We do not insist that you must call yourself a Hindu. We simply tell you that you are a Hindu.”  That sentence deserves considerably more examination than it has received. Pluralism does not merely mean allowing minorities to exist. Pluralism means allowing them to define themselves.

7. The Most Serious Test: Violence and the Sangh Parivar

Here criticism must again be precise. It would be irresponsible to claim that every crime committed by a person associated with Hindu nationalism was ordered by the RSS. Individual criminal responsibility must remain individual unless organizational responsibility can be demonstrated. But there is also a substantial documentary record concerning violence involving organizations identified with the wider Sangh Parivar. Human Rights Watch's 1999 investigation into anti-Christian violence identified the RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal as important Hindu nationalist organizations connected to the attacks and documented propaganda, mobilization and violence against Christian communities. Its later reporting documented attacks against Muslims associated with cow-protection vigilantism and extremist Hindu organizations affiliated with the ruling BJP. Human Rights Watch has also documented discriminatory violence and propaganda affecting Dalits and described the Sangh Parivar network's role in mobilization directed against minorities. The RSS disputes such characterizations. Indeed, Bhagwat stated in 2025 that there was “not a single example of a Sangh Swayamsevak being involved in violence” and emphasized the organization's extensive social-service activities instead. That sweeping assertion itself deserves examination against the historical record. But the larger institutional question is more important. When organizations operating within one's ideological family repeatedly become associated with communal intimidation, hate speech or violence, is it sufficient merely to say: They are not us? Where are the expulsions? Where are the public disciplinary proceedings? Where are the institutional investigations? Where are the permanent prohibitions against members advocating expulsion, collective punishment, or violence against minorities? Where are the publicly accessible membership and disciplinary records demonstrating enforcement? An organization cannot simultaneously claim enormous influence over society when discussing its achievements and almost no influence over individuals and organizations within its ideological ecosystem when discussing abuses. Power creates responsibility.

8. Bhagwat's New York Statement Creates a Test for the RSS Itself

This is why Bhagwat's statement should be taken seriously. Perhaps more seriously than some of his admirers intend. If “If any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslim in Bharat, he will not remain Hindu,” then the statement establishes a standard. Apply it. An RSS or Sangh-affiliated leader calling for Muslims to be expelled should face consequences. A speaker advocating collective violence against Muslims should face consequences. A campaign portraying Christians categorically as enemies should face consequences. Anyone advocating rape, lynching, forced displacement, or religious persecution should be publicly rejected—not merely after international criticism, but as a matter of institutional principle. If Bhagwat's words are doctrine, they require enforcement. Otherwise, they risk becoming public relations.

9. Why Saying This in America Matters

The location of Bhagwat's speech makes the issue particularly significant. His appearance in New York occurred amid substantial controversy. Reuters reported opposition to the event and noted the RSS's close relationship with the BJP. More significantly, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a statement on August 26 expressing concern over Bhagwat's visit and saying that members of RSS subgroups had perpetrated attacks against Christians, Dalits, Muslims and Sikhs. USCIRF called for accountability and sanctions against individuals responsible for serious religious-freedom violations. The RSS and Indian government reject such characterizations and have accused critics of bias. That response must also be acknowledged. But the controversy demonstrates why the internationalization of RSS-associated organizations deserves scrutiny. The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA, for example, operates openly in the United States and publishes annual reports. Unlike the RSS in India, HSS USA is a registered American nonprofit whose IRS filings are publicly available. Its 2024 filing reported approximately $2.4 million in revenue, $1.73 million in expenses, and $6.86 million in net assets. That distinction is important. Criticism of Hindutva organizations in America must never become suspicion of Hindu Americans generally. Hinduism is not the RSS. Indian Americans are not the RSS. Hindu temples are not the RSS. And political disagreement with Hindutva is not hostility toward Hindus. The same distinction Americans properly make between Christianity and Christian nationalism, Judaism and Jewish nationalism, or Islam and Islamist political movements should apply here. A religion and a political ideology operating in its name are not identical.

10. The Question America Should Ask Is Not Whether the RSS May Speak

Bhagwat has every right to express his views peacefully in the United States subject to American law. His opponents possess exactly the same right to protest him. The appropriate democratic response to controversial ideology is not collective demonization or suppression of lawful speech. It is transparency and examination. American journalists, universities, politicians, interfaith organizations, and Hindu institutions should therefore ask straightforward questions of organizations connected to the Sangh tradition: What precisely is their relationship with the RSS? What financial relationships exist between American organizations and organizations in India? Are American charitable funds transferred abroad, and if so, to whom? What position do these organizations take on equal citizenship for Indian Muslims and Christians? Do they support India's secular constitutional order? What precisely do they mean by Hindu Rashtra? Do they condemn religious vigilantism regardless of who commits it? Do they reject calls for expelling Muslims from India? Do they reject anti-Christian violence? Do they accept Dalits as completely equal human beings without caste qualification? Do they accept the right of Indians to reject the label “Hindu” altogether? Those questions are not anti-Hindu. They are democratic questions.

11. The Transparency Challenge:

There is actually a straightforward way for the RSS to answer many of its critics. It could voluntarily adopt transparency standards exceeding what Indian law requires. Publish an annual audited consolidated financial statement. Publish major sources and categories of funding. Publish organizational expenditures. Publish a detailed organizational chart. Publish the relationship between the RSS and major Sangh Parivar organizations. Publish clear membership standards. Publish disciplinary procedures. Publish annual figures showing members expelled or disciplined for advocating communal hatred or violence. Publish an unequivocal declaration accepting the Indian Constitution—including equal citizenship regardless of religion—as the supreme political framework of the Republic. Explain precisely how “Hindu Rashtra” differs institutionally from the Republic defined by India's Constitution. And establish a public mechanism through which allegations of violence or religious hatred involving officeholders can be investigated. None of these steps would prevent the RSS from advocating Hindu culture. They would simply make an extraordinarily powerful organization extraordinarily accountable.

12. The Deeper Question: Who Gets to Define Hinduism?

There is another problem hidden inside Bhagwat's apparently inclusive sentence. “If a Hindu thinks Muslims should not live in India, he is not Hindu.” The moral sentiment is admirable. But who authorized the RSS chief to decide who is and is not Hindu? Hindu civilization is vastly older than the RSS. The Upanishads, Vedanta, Bhakti traditions, Shaiva traditions, Vaishnava traditions, Shakta traditions and countless regional philosophies existed centuries or millennia before K. B. Hedgewar founded an organization in Nagpur in 1925. Hinduism does not belong to the RSS. Nor does patriotism. Nor does India. Bhagwat is therefore entitled to say: The Hinduism I understand rejects the expulsion of Muslims. That would be a powerful moral statement. But declaring who qualifies as Hindu illustrates precisely the ideological authority the RSS has gradually attempted to acquire. A century-old political-cultural organization cannot become the ecclesiastical authority of a civilization thousands of years old. There is no Hindu pope. And there should not be one.

13. Bhagwat Should Be Taken at His Word

There is, however, another possibility. What if Bhagwat genuinely intends to move the RSS? Then critics should not simply ridicule him. They should challenge him to prove it. Let his New York declaration become a benchmark. Let every RSS leader repeat it in India: Muslims belong to India permanently and equally. Not because Hindus permit them to stay. Not because Muslims share supposedly Hindu ancestry. Not because they agree to call Indian civilization Hindu. But because they are citizens of India. Let the same principle apply to Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, atheists, Dalits, Adivasis, and everyone else. And then take the decisive additional step: No Indian's citizenship or patriotism requires religious certification from another Indian. That would transform Bhagwat's statement from tolerance into equality.

Conclusion: The Difference Between Tolerance and Citizenship

The most revealing word in debates of this kind is often “allowed.” Muslims should be “allowed” to live in India. But Muslims do not require permission from the RSS to live in India. Neither do Christians. Neither do Sikhs. Neither do atheists. Neither does anyone else. They are not guests in somebody else's civilization. They are citizens of a republic. That is the fundamental difference between majoritarian tolerance and constitutional citizenship. Tolerance says: I am the majority, but I permit you to remain. Democracy says: Neither of us owns this country more than the other. That is why Mohan Bhagwat's New York declaration deserves neither automatic condemnation nor uncritical applause. It deserves a test. If the RSS truly believes that no Hindu can seek an India without Muslims, it should transform that principle into institutional conduct. Open its structures to greater public scrutiny. Clarify its finances. Define its relationship with the enormous Sangh Parivar network. Confront the Godse chapter of its history honestly. Explain Hindu Rashtra without semantic ambiguity. Discipline those within its sphere who advocate religious hatred. Reject violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits and other vulnerable communities without qualification. And affirm something even stronger than what Bhagwat said in New York: Muslims have an equal and unconditional place in India not because the RSS grants it, and not because Hindu philosophy tolerates it, but because India belongs equally to every Indian. If the RSS accepts that proposition, Bhagwat's New York speech could become more than an exercise in image-making. It could represent a genuine ideological evolution. If it does not, historians will have to ask why an organization celebrating its hundredth year discovered the language of pluralism so eloquently before an American audience, while leaving so many unresolved questions about power, accountability, and majoritarianism at home. After one hundred years, the RSS is too large, too influential, and too deeply connected to India's political life to ask the world to simply trust its intentions. The greater an organization's power, the greater its obligation to make itself accountable. And that—not whether Mohan Bhagwat delivered an appealing sentence in New York—is the real issue his speech has placed before India and the world.  

AA