US faith leaders regret appearing at Hindu nationalist RSS event

By MNTV Desk

NEW YORK (MNTV) – Prominent Christian and Muslim faith leaders in New York say they were misled into participating in events featuring the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, the patron organization of a vast network of Hindu nationalist groups.

The controversy erupted after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat appeared at an Aug. 29 gathering at Madison Square Garden attended by thousands of people.

The Rev. Adriene Thorne, senior minister of New York’s historic Riverside Church, said she had been led to believe she was participating in an interfaith event devoted to peace, human dignity and cooperation among religions.

Instead, she found herself sharing a platform with Bhagwat.

“My presence there was a mistake,” Thorne said in a video statement posted on Instagram.

She said organizers had withheld crucial information about who was behind the event and whom it was intended to honor.

“I was never told that Mohan Bhagwat would be the central figure at the Madison Square Garden event,” Thorne said. “I was never told the RSS was involved.”

Thorne said she received repeated invitations over six weeks from a group calling itself the World Council of Religious Leaders. The organizers described a gathering bringing together nearly 200 representatives of different religious traditions.

But, according to Thorne, the program provided to participants left the name of the “guest of honor” blank. She later discovered that the space had been reserved for Bhagwat.

“Had I known the event centered on the leader of the RSS, I would never have participated,” she said.

Thorne said her appearance created the false impression that she or Riverside Church endorsed Bhagwat, the RSS or the Hindu nationalist ideology associated with the organization.

For Riverside Church, the controversy is particularly sensitive. The Manhattan church has a long history of involvement in civil rights, anti-war campaigns and social justice movements.

Thorne said its values were fundamentally at odds with religious supremacy.

“I reject Hindu supremacy just as I reject Christian supremacy, Muslim supremacy, Jewish supremacy, racism, and every ideology that elevates one community over another,” she said.

She also expressed solidarity with Indians who have faced discrimination because of religion, caste or identity.

“I stand with all those in India who have experienced violence or discrimination because of their religion, caste or identity,” she said.

Muslim imam says he felt ‘betrayed’

Thorne was not the only American religious leader who said organizers had failed to disclose the nature of the gathering.

Imam Shamsi Ali, director of the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens and a prominent Muslim interfaith leader, attended a related breakfast at The Pierre hotel in Manhattan.

He later described his participation as a “serious error in judgment.”

“I feel kind of betrayed,” Ali told The New York Times.

Significantly, the newspaper independently examined communications between organizers and the religious leaders.

The Times reported that it reviewed a dozen emails sent to faith leaders during July and August and found that the organizers made no mention of either the RSS or Bhagwat.

Ali said he had understood that he was being invited to an interfaith gathering built around the theme “One World, One Humanity.”

He said he would have declined immediately had he known the gathering was intended to honor the RSS chief.

After attending the breakfast and learning more about the event, Ali did not participate in the Madison Square Garden program.

The controversy has therefore raised a larger question: whether respected American Christian, Muslim and other religious leaders were brought into the events without adequate disclosure, and whether their presence could subsequently be portrayed as interfaith acceptance of the RSS.

Thorne said she confronted Bawa Jain, the interfaith organizer who had repeatedly invited her, after discovering who Bhagwat was and why the gathering had been organized.

According to Thorne, Jain told her Bhagwat’s identity could not be disclosed beforehand because of security concerns.

She rejected that explanation.

“That’s not a reason to hoodwink people,” Thorne told The New York Times.

Jain, secretary general of the World Council of Religious Leaders, told the newspaper that he regretted that the faith leaders felt misled.

But he did not apologize for honoring Bhagwat.

Jain said Hindu organizations had approached him the previous year about the RSS centenary and Bhagwat’s planned visit.

What is RSS?

For many Americans, the three letters RSS carry little meaning. In India, however, the organization has exercised enormous political and social influence for decades.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose name is commonly translated as National Volunteer Organization, was established in 1925.

It describes itself as a cultural and volunteer movement dedicated to organizing Hindu society and promoting discipline, social service and Indian national unity.

But the RSS is also the principal ideological and organizational force behind the Sangh Parivar, meaning the “family” of Hindu nationalist organizations.

In that sense, the RSS functions as the patron and ideological parent of a wide range of Hindu nationalist groups active in Indian politics, religion, education, labor, student organizing and social movements.

These include organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, the Bajrang Dal youth organization and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad student movement.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which governs India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has deep historical and organizational links with the RSS. Modi himself spent years as a full-time RSS organizer before moving into electoral politics.

At the heart of the movement is an ideology known as Hindutva, literally meaning “Hinduness.”

For an American audience, an important distinction is necessary.

Hindutva is a political nationalist ideology. It seeks to define Indian national identity primarily through Hindu civilization and culture and relegates Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities to a subordinate position.

The RSS disputes descriptions of itself as supremacist. Bhagwat has repeatedly emphasized social harmony and has publicly spoken of respecting religious diversity.

But observers say such language contrasts with the record of the wider Hindu nationalist movement in India.

The RSS and its affiliated organizations have repeatedly targeted and fanned hostility against Muslims and Christians.

Human Rights Watch has documented violence against Christians involving organizations within the Sangh Parivar and has described the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal as closely connected components of the Hindu nationalist movement.

The broader movement has also been scrutinized over episodes of Hindu-Muslim communal violence.

One of the most consequential was the campaign to build a Hindu temple at the site of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya.

Hindu nationalist activists demolished the 16th-century mosque in December 1992, triggering communal violence across India. The political campaign surrounding the site helped transform the BJP from a relatively marginal party into a major national political force.

A decade later, Gujarat witnessed another devastating outbreak of communal violence in 2002, which killed more than 2,000 Muslims.

Modi was chief minister of Gujarat at the time. Human rights organizations and scholars have continued to document the role of Hindu nationalist activists in attacks against Muslims during the violence under his supervision.

Gandhi assassination and the RSS ban

India’s freedom icon Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated in January 1948 by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who had been associated with the RSS. The Indian government then temporarily banned the organization.

The New York Times, in its report on the New York controversy, described the RSS as one of the world’s largest far-right organizations and noted its history of seeking to reshape India into a Hindu-first nation.

Historians have accused Hindu nationalist governments and institutions of promoting a Hindu-centered account of India’s past while diminishing the contributions of Muslims and other communities.

Oxford University Press academic research describes how Hindu nationalist interpretations have moved through RSS-linked schools and institutions and subsequently entered official curricula and textbooks.

The debate intensified after the BJP returned to national power under Modi in 2014.

India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training, or NCERT, has removed or reduced material dealing with Mughal rulers, the 2002 Gujarat riots and Gandhi’s opposition to Hindu majoritarianism.

These changes fit a longer effort by Hindu nationalist organizations to reinterpret India as fundamentally a Hindu civilization rather than the product of centuries of interaction among Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Muslim, Christian and other traditions.

Academic research has traced the development of this Hindu-centered interpretation through RSS educational networks and into official textbooks.

An Indian Express investigation also documented the removal of substantial textbook material dealing with the Gujarat riots and other politically sensitive episodes.

Protesters outside Madison Square

The event had generated opposition even before Thorne and Ali publicly expressed regret.

About 100 demonstrators from different religious and ethnic backgrounds gathered outside Madison Square Garden, according to The New York Times.

Hindu, Muslim and Sikh protesters carried signs opposing Hindutva and accusing the RSS of promoting fascism. Some demonstrators chanted “RSS out of NYC.”

The Indian American Muslim Council and allied organizations had held a news conference before Bhagwat’s appearance to oppose the gathering.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani also publicly criticized the event.

The Rev. Winnie Varghese, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, attended the breakfast gathering.

But after leaving the hotel, she went to Madison Square Garden not to join Bhagwat’s event, but to protest outside it.

Varghese told The New York Times that interfaith spaces can be difficult to navigate because religious leaders may not always know who is behind an invitation.

“It’s very, very hard to vet these things, period,” she said.

The episode therefore poses questions that go beyond Indian politics.

American churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and interfaith organizations routinely participate in events intended to encourage dialogue across religious and political divides.

Such engagement depends heavily on trust.

Religious leaders need to know who is organizing an event, who will share the platform with them and how their presence, statements and photographs may subsequently be used.

When those details are withheld, an invitation presented as interfaith dialogue can become political endorsement by association.

Thorne said she is particularly troubled that photographs of her appearance may continue circulating long after her explanation.

She stressed that Riverside Church’s history is rooted in pluralism, racial justice, peace and solidarity with marginalized communities.

She also directed her message beyond New York to communities in India that have experienced discrimination.

“I stand with all those in India who have experienced violence or discrimination because of their religion, caste or identity,” she said.

And she said the lesson from the episode was clear.

“My presence should not have happened. I was misled,” Thorne said.

“I will not allow my ministry or the name of Riverside Church to be used to legitimize any ideology that violates our deepest values.”

For Thorne and Ali, what had been presented as a gathering celebrating “One World, One Humanity” has instead become a warning to American interfaith leaders about the politics that can lie behind invitations framed in the language of religious unity.