Former RSS insider calls for terror label on RSS and allies
A former RSS insider alleges Hindu nationalist figures were involved in bomb plots designed to be blamed on Muslims and is demanding an investigation.
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — A former longtime member of India’s powerful Hindu supremacist movement has called on authorities to designate three of the country’s most influential Hindu right-wing organizations as terrorist groups, reviving explosive allegations that extremists within the movement were involved in bomb plots that could be blamed on Muslims.
According to the digital news outlet The Wire, Yashwant Sahdev Shinde, who spent years as a full-time worker for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), made the demand in letters sent this month to India’s federal Home Minister Amit Shah and Karnataka state Home Minister Priyank Kharge. He called for the RSS, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to be declared terrorist organizations and demanded investigations into several senior Hindu nationalist figures over bombings that struck India during the 2000s.
The allegations are particularly significant because Shinde is not an outside critic of the Hindu nationalist movement. He joined the RSS as a full-time organizer in 1990 and says he operated within its network for years before breaking with the organization after allegedly being asked to join a team involved in making and training others to use explosives.
The RSS sits at the center of India’s Hindu nationalist movement and is the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The VHP is a prominent Hindu militant organization within the broader RSS network, while its youth wing, Bajrang Dal, has frequently been accused by rights groups of involvement in violence and intimidation targeting religious minorities.
Shinde first placed some of his most serious accusations before a court in 2022, when he filed a sworn affidavit seeking to testify in a federal criminal case concerning a 2006 explosion in Nanded, in the western state of Maharashtra.
That explosion occurred inside the home of Laxman Rajkondwar, who investigators identified as an RSS worker. His son Naresh and another man, Himanshu Panse, reportedly associated with the VHP, were killed. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation described the incident as a bomb-assembly operation and said the explosive device may have been intended for an attack on a mosque in the city of Aurangabad.
In his affidavit, Shinde alleged that he attended meetings where members of the RSS and VHP discussed bomb attacks and claimed that he and around 20 others received explosives training in 2003 under the guidance of Milind Parande, who is now the VHP’s general secretary.
Shinde subsequently made an even more disturbing allegation in media interviews, claiming participants were trained for bombings that could subsequently be blamed on Muslims. He linked members of the network to attacks on mosques in the Maharashtra towns of Jalna, Purna and Parbhani in 2003 and 2004.
Those allegations have not been judicially established. Shinde sought permission to testify in the Nanded case, but the court ultimately rejected his application. In January 2025, a trial court acquitted all nine surviving defendants in the case.
Shinde has nevertheless continued pressing authorities to investigate a wider Hindu extremist network behind bomb attacks. His latest letter names RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, senior RSS figure Indresh Kumar and VHP leader Parande among those he wants questioned.
He has also repeated allegations concerning the 2007 bombing of the Ajmer Sharif Sufi shrine, one of India’s most important Muslim religious sites, and figures who were prosecuted over the 2008 Malegaon bombing, including former army officer Prasad Purohit and former BJP lawmaker Pragya Singh Thakur. Purohit and Thakur were ultimately acquitted.
The cases belong to a particularly contentious chapter in India’s recent history. A series of bombings targeting Muslim religious sites and Muslim-majority areas during the 2000s initially fueled allegations of Islamic militancy, while subsequent investigations in some cases turned toward Hindu extremist networks. Prosecutions produced sharply varying outcomes, including convictions in some cases and acquittals in others.
It comes as Karnataka’s Congress-led state government has intensified scrutiny of the RSS. Home Minister Kharge recently challenged RSS chief Bhagwat to disclose details about the organization’s legal status, finances, organizational structure and tax compliance. Shinde said his letter to Kharge reiterates allegations he previously sought to place before the judiciary.
In his letter, Shinde also accused BJP and RSS figures in connection with several major episodes in India’s recent history, including the 1998 nuclear tests, the Kargil war with Pakistan, the 2002 anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, the 2019 Pulwama attack and the Modi government’s removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s limited constitutional autonomy.
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