A go to by India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to america this week is being opposed by many activists, politicians and human rights teams in New York.
Bhagwat is scheduled to talk on Saturday at an occasion known as the “Common Oneness Celebration” at Madison Sq. Backyard in New York, and is predicted to attract greater than 5,000 attendees, together with multifaith leaders.
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However whereas the occasion is being billed as an occasion for unity, the RSS – a Hindu majoritarian entrance that’s the dad or mum of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering – has repeatedly confronted accusations again in India of contributing to the persecution of spiritual minorities, together with Muslims and Christians.
New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani informed native media on Tuesday that he doesn’t help the upcoming occasion and known as the RSS’s ideology “exclusionary.” Many human rights teams within the US, similar to Hindus for Human Rights, have mentioned in an announcement that “Mohan Bhagwat doesn’t characterize Hindus.”
The principal organiser of Saturday’s occasion is a US-based non-profit group known as American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (AHEAD) Discussion board, which argues on its web site that it seeks to advertise intercultural understanding. However the web site itself presents no particulars of these behind the group.
A deeper take a look at the group’s founding and registration paperwork, nonetheless, sheds gentle on its leaders – and their deep hyperlinks to the RSS, which has lengthy advocated for a Hindu-first imaginative and prescient for India, a rustic that has in any other case, via its millennia-long historical past, been residence to individuals from many religions.
So what’s AHEAD Discussion board and who’re the organisers of Bhagwat’s New York occasion?
What’s the occasion about?
The occasion, organised by AHEAD Discussion board, will happen from on Saturday 2:00pm to fifteen:30pm native time (19:00-21:30 GMT) in Madison Sq. Backyard in New York.
In line with AHEAD’s social media platforms, the occasion known as “Common Oneness Celebration” seeks to rejoice “variety, dialogue, and the timeless Indian philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.”
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is a Sanskrit phrase which interprets to “the world is one household.”
India’s RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been invited because the occasion’s keynote speaker and comes greater than a 12 months after the RSS celebrated 100 years since its founding in 1925. Leaders from different faiths are additionally anticipated to attend.
However Apoorvanand, a Hindi professor on the College of Delhi who writes literary and cultural criticism, informed Al Jazeera that the “unity” ads for the occasion check with “Hindu unity”.
“The target is to determine Hindu unity, which the RSS works for. It’s additionally about Hindu unity towards Muslims and Christians,” he mentioned.
What’s the RSS and who’s Bhagwat?
The RSS is a right-wing Hindu volunteer organisation based in 1925 by doctor and Hindu nationalist Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur, modern-day Maharashtra.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, typically known as the Sangh for brief, is Hindi for Nationwide Volunteer Organisation.
The RSS works throughout society, working faculties, hospitals, magazines and publishing homes, to advocate for the thought of Hindutva, a Hindu supremacist concept that goals to show India from a constitutionally secular state right into a Hindu one.
It describes itself as a “Hindu-centric civilisational, cultural motion” that goals to “carry the nation to the top of glory” and is commonly described because the ideological mothership of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP).
However the RSS has additionally been banned in India a number of occasions, together with in 1948 after a former member assassinated independence chief Mahatma Gandhi.
At the moment, the RSS leads a community of greater than 2,500 right-wing Hindu organisations known as the Sangh Parivar, Hindi for “RSS household”.
Bhagwat, who was born in Chandrapur within the Indian state of Maharashtra, grew up in a household that supported RSS values and formally turned the organisation’s member in 1975. He was appointed because the organisation’s chief in March 2009.
What’s the controversy over the New York occasion?
Indian human rights teams, activists and likewise New York’s Mayor Mamdani have opposed the occasion.
When requested by native media on Tuesday about stopping the occasion, Mamdani mentioned that as the primary Indian-American mayor of New York, it has “been extremely troubling to see the rise of a motion that’s predicated on an exclusionary imaginative and prescient”.
He acknowledged that he grew up in India, which he mentioned was “a pluralistic society of a secular Republic that believed within the belonging of each one who was from India.”
He, nonetheless, added that he was unsure if, as mayor of New York, he may cease a personal organisation’s occasion.
In an announcement printed on August 19, Sravya Tadepalli, deputy government director of Hindus for Human Rights, mentioned, “Mohan Bhagwat doesn’t characterize Hindus. He represents the perimeter, extremist Hindu nationalist motion, which has engaged in hate and violence towards spiritual minority communities for a century.”
“In 1939, Madison Sq. Backyard hosted a Nazi rally, which any of us can look again on and really feel shock and disgrace. Madison Sq. Backyard shouldn’t make the identical mistake by holding a rally celebrating the chief of a hate motion like Hindu nationalism,” Tadepalli added.
Amid these remarks, the RSS has defended Bhagwat’s objectives on the upcoming occasion.
On Thursday, senior RSS functionary Sunil Ambekar mentioned, “The Common Oneness Celebration in New York exemplifies an interfaith gathering.”
He mentioned that Bhagwat would “talk with a various, multicultural and multi-faith viewers”.
What’s AHEAD Discussion board?
AHEAD Discussion board describes itself as an organisation that “builds bridges between communities worldwide via understanding and mutual respect”.
According to its web site, the group has chapters throughout main US cities together with New York, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, DC an Houston, amongst others.
AHEAD Discussion board was registered as a nonprofit organisation in Might 2025. According to the Inner Income Service (the US tax company), the Discussion board filed for tax exemption in September 2025.
On the finish of 2025, the tax submitting exhibits that AHEAD had generated income of $61,409 – all of it from contributions. AHEAD additionally had belongings value $61,124 within the final fiscal 12 months.
Who’re the important thing people at AHEAD?
Whereas US IRS information exhibits that AHEAD’s present administrators are Sudesh Agrawal, Naresh Rajanna and Rasita Vishnuram, a report printed by Savera, a coalition of US-based teams attempting to fight the rise of Hindu nationalism, suggests direct hyperlinks between the nonprofit and the RSS.
Al Jazeera has additionally independently verified a sequence of paperwork filed by AHEAD with US businesses that present these hyperlinks.
The group listed a person named Harish Kandpal as its bookkeeper in its submitting with the IRS underneath its tax-exempt standing in 2025.
However California’s itemizing of registered nonprofits and companies exhibits that AHEAD Discussion board was, till earlier this 12 months, itemizing Khanderao Kand, a long-time US-based chief of the RSS and its abroad wing, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), as its bookkeeper. The organisation, in reality, was initially registered to Kand’s tackle. The California database exhibits the registration was modified to Kandpal’s tackle in March 2026.
That, Savera mentioned in its report, occurred after Kand’s RSS hyperlinks and his efforts to foyer within the US on behalf of the Hindu supremacist group had been “uncovered by investigative reporting”.
Nonetheless, Kandpal and Kand have beforehand been colleagues on the Basis for India and Indian Diaspora Research, one other US-based group based by Kand.
In the meantime, Savera discovered that different leaders of the AHEAD Discussion board even have hyperlinks to the RSS or to organisations near the Modi authorities. Sudesh Agarwal, one of many administrators of the nonprofit, heads the Cleveland chapter of the HSS, as an example.
Al Jazeera has reached out to AHEAD Discussion board for its response to the findings in Savera’s report, and accusations that it’s trying to masks the Hindu majoritarian leanings of its leaders, however is but to obtain a response.
Why is all this important?
Since 2015, a number of Muslims in India have been lynched by mobs throughout disputes about herding cattle or over allegations of consuming beef. They’ve additionally fallen sufferer to focused assaults.
Moreover hate crimes towards Indian Muslims, there was a marked spike in hate crimes towards Christians in India lately. In line with a report printed at the beginning of the 12 months by India Hate Lab, a bunch that tracks hate crimes and speech in India, hate speech occasions concentrating on Christians rose from 115 in 2024 to 162 in 2025, a 41 % improve.
Many cases of hate speech towards Muslims and Christians have concerned leaders of the BJP or different organisations within the broad RSS ecosystem.
Nonetheless, in current months, the RSS has been organising visits to the US and different Western nations to bolster its public picture globally and dispel claims it’s concerned in violence towards spiritual minority teams in India.
Saturday’s occasion is one such effort by the RSS and the occasion’s hosts, in accordance with specialists.
“The RSS is spreading its tentacles to collaborate with different right-wing organisations,” Apoorvanand mentioned.
“They’ve expressed this intent very clearly in current occasions that they wish to set up a proper reactionary community and be a part of it. So they’re in search of allies at occasions within the West with teams near [US President Donald] Trump and his allies,” he mentioned.
“I’m very unhappy that people who find themselves having fun with American hospitality and freedom of speech and expression within the US, wish to apply Hinduism on this method, the place they use their assets to help an organisation which is accountable for marginalisation of Muslim, Christian and different minority communities inside India.
“There couldn’t be a extra misleading factor than this.”
