How Hindu supremacists built a political network in the United States

NEW YORK (MNTV) — The appearance of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat in New York this week is the latest public manifestation of a Hindu supremacist movement that has spent more than five decades building an organizational and political presence in the United States.

What began with the establishment of Hindu nationalist organizations among Indian immigrants has developed into a network of advocacy groups, religious institutions, youth organizations, political activists and donors involved in both American politics and the projection of Hindu nationalist politics abroad.

Historian Audrey Truschke, a professor of history at Rutgers University, traces the American presence of the Hindu Right to 1970 in her study The Hindu Right in the United States, published by the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History in 2022.

Truschke describes the Hindu Right as a dense international network promoting Hindutva, an ethnonationalist political ideology that seeks to define India primarily as a Hindu nation and transform the country into a Hindu state governed according to majoritarian principles.

She notes that the ideology was articulated in India in the 1920s, while Hindu Right organizations began expanding overseas in the 1940s and reached the United States in 1970.

She places the RSS at the center of that network, describing the organization as the principal institution of the global Sangh Parivar, or “family” of Hindu Right organizations.

Truschke also notes that Hindutva was shaped by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in the 1920s, who promoted a conception of Indian identity in which Muslims were cast as an opposing group.

The RSS was then established in 1925. In her account, the organization developed a paramilitary structure based around local shakhas, or branches, and became the central institution of the Hindu Right.

From religious outreach to organized American network

The first major Sangh organization established in the United States was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA).

According to Truschke, VHPA was established in 1970 by four RSS members. The organization was formally incorporated in several American states in 1974.

Unlike the RSS, which was designed primarily around political and social mobilization in India, the VHP offered a more explicitly religious and cultural entry point into American society.

The VHP’s American branch organized religious programs, youth activities, camps and community initiatives. But the organization also remained connected to the political priorities of the Indian Hindu Right.

Political Research Associates (PRA), in its 2024 investigation HAF Way to Supremacy, describes the early American Sangh as a network built largely by immigrants who retained strong political and ideological connections to India.

Its researchers say some first-generation members viewed the United States as their karmabhoomi, or “land of work,” while continuing to regard India as their janmabhoomi, or homeland. This meant that developments in India continued to shape political activity within the diaspora.

The network expanded further when the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) was established in the United States in 1989.

Truschke describes HSS as the overseas manifestation of the RSS.

It adopted the RSS’s basic organizational model, including shakhas, while replacing “Rashtriya,” meaning national, with “Hindu” in its name to reflect its operation outside India. She notes that the HSS became particularly important during India’s 1975-77 Emergency, when the RSS was banned domestically.

By the 1980s and 1990s, the American network was increasingly involved in India’s Hindu nationalist campaigns.

PRA says the Ram Janmabhoomi movement — the campaign to demolish the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and build a temple at the site — marked a major turning point. American Sangh organizations provided political, financial and moral support for the campaign, while members traveled to India and helped mobilize diaspora resources.

The movement also developed organizations specifically designed to influence US politics, including the Overseas Friends of the BJP, while fundraising structures such as the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation helped channel money toward Hindu nationalist projects in India.

Truschke’s research similarly emphasizes that the American Sangh should not be understood as a collection of unrelated Hindu community organizations. She describes the Sangh Parivar as a transnational network connected through overlapping personnel, organizational structures, shared histories and a common commitment to Hindutva.

Strategy changes: presenting Hindutva as minority rights

The network’s strategy began changing significantly around the turn of the century.

PRA identifies the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), established in 2003, as an important example of this shift.

Rather than presenting itself primarily as a Hindu nationalist organization, HAF adopted the language of American civil rights, religious freedom and minority rights. Its founders included activists who had already been involved with the HSS, VHPA and the Hindu Students Council, according to PRA.

One of them was Mihir Meghani.

PRA’s investigation documents Meghani’s involvement with the Hindu Students Council and VHPA before HAF’s establishment, his participation in an RSS training camp in India in 1995, and subsequent work with the RSS in Meghalaya.

In 1996, Meghani published an essay titled “Hindutva — The Great Nationalist Ideology,” explicitly promoting Hindutva. The essay was later republished by the BJP. PRA argues that his trajectory illustrates how a younger generation of American Sangh activists sought to professionalize the movement and make it more acceptable within US political and civil-rights institutions.

HAF has described itself as independent from Indian political organizations. PRA disputes that characterization, documenting extensive financial, personnel and operational connections between HAF, HSS and VHPA.

The report says the relationship is visible not only through individual activists but through funding. It cites, among other examples, a $120,000 grant to HAF in 2007-08 from a foundation controlled by major Sangh donor Braham Ratan Aggarwal, and nearly $450,000 in donations to HAF from the Bhutada Family Foundation between 2005 and 2020.

This structure reflects what Truschke describes as the broad organizational character of the Hindu Right in the United States.

She writes that the major interlinked groups in America work across politics, religion, outreach and fundraising, allowing the movement to exercise influence within American institutions while simultaneously strengthening the global Hindutva project.

The American Sangh’s political activity has increasingly included efforts to influence how India is discussed in Washington.

PRA documents repeated campaigns by HAF against US criticism of the Indian government, including efforts to defeat congressional resolutions concerning religious freedom, the Gujarat violence, Kashmir and the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In 2013, HAF campaigned against a bipartisan congressional resolution that praised India’s religious diversity while calling for greater protection for religious minorities and criticizing Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat violence.

PRA says HAF lobbied lawmakers and mobilized supporters against the resolution, with one congressional staffer telling a journalist that the organization was “definitely trying to undermine anyone in Washington who is critical of Modi.”

A similar pattern emerged after Modi’s election as prime minister in 2014.

HAF figures participated in the organization of Modi’s 2014 Madison Square Garden appearance and the 2019 “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, which drew more than 50,000 people and featured then-President Donald Trump alongside Modi.

According to PRA, HAF leaders occupied prominent organizing roles at both events.

The organization’s advocacy extended to Kashmir.

After Modi’s government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status in August 2019 and imposed a sweeping security and communications crackdown, HAF defended the decision and opposed a US congressional resolution calling for an end to mass detentions and restrictions on communications.

PRA says HAF mobilized thousands of emails against the resolution and later claimed credit for preventing it from moving forward.

The organization also defended the Citizenship Amendment Act, which critics said discriminated against Muslims by making religion a criterion for eligibility for a fast-track citizenship process.

From diaspora politics to US far right

The American Sangh’s political evolution has increasingly intersected with the American far right.

Truschke’s work argues that the US context is crucial to understanding how Hindu supremacists have operated in America. Rather than simply reproducing the politics of India, organizations have adapted their messaging to American racial, religious and political debates.

A separate study published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication similarly finds that one of the American Sangh’s central objectives has been to construct a distinctly “Hindu American” identity, separate from a broader Indian American identity. The research notes that Hindutva messages circulate through community organizations, traditional media, social media and messaging platforms.

PRA argues that this strategy has increasingly brought Hindu nationalist organizations into alignment with the broader US right.

HAF has opposed efforts to add caste as a protected category in US anti-discrimination law and spent heavily campaigning against California’s SB 403 in 2023. The organization promoted the phrase “critical caste theory,” borrowing rhetoric from US conservative attacks on “critical race theory,” according to PRA.

The research group also documents HAF’s cooperation with conservative and anti-Muslim organizations, including the Middle East Forum, as well as relationships with right-wing Zionist organizations and political figures.

HAF has also faced criticism over its treatment of Muslims and Muslim American organizations.

PRA documents its opposition to a proposed mosque near Ground Zero following the September 11 attacks, the promotion of anti-Muslim narratives and its partnerships with individuals and groups identified by researchers as part of the US Islamophobia network.

The organization’s political activity has increasingly intersected with Republican and MAGA politics as well.

PRA points to the involvement of former HAF government-relations director Jay Kansara with Trump-aligned groups and the emergence of political committees seeking to consolidate conservative Hindu American support.

It also documents collaboration between HAF figures and David Brog, a former leader of Christians United for Israel, around the idea of a broader anti-“woke” alliance.

The result is a movement that has changed markedly since the first RSS-linked organizations appeared in the United States in 1970.

What began with religious organizations, community programs and youth camps developed into a sophisticated network combining advocacy, political lobbying, fundraising and media operations.

Truschke’s research shows that the American presence is not an accidental offshoot of Indian Hindu nationalism but part of a broader transnational movement. The Sangh Parivar now spans dozens of countries, with the United States serving as one of its most important overseas arenas.

PRA’s investigation, meanwhile, shows how a newer generation of organizations sought to give that movement a more American political vocabulary — presenting Hindutva through the language of civil rights and minority protection while maintaining connections to the older RSS-linked infrastructure.

More than five decades after the first American Sangh organization was established, Bhagwat’s appearance in New York therefore represents not the arrival of the RSS in the United States, but the latest stage of a project that has been developing there since 1970.