Hindutva is not welcome here”: Hundreds protest outside RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s US event
New York City Council Member Julie Won also criticised Madison Square Garden for hosting Bhagwat, saying New York City rejected hate-based ideologies.
New York: Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Madison Square Garden to protest an event featuring Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, with demonstrators demanding that the United States revoke his visa and sanction the Hindu nationalist organisation.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the demonstration, organised by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) along with dozens of faith and civil rights groups, came days after the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) called for Bhagwat’s visa to be revoked and recommended targeted sanctions against the RSS.
Protesters gathered outside the arena carrying placards and raising slogans against the RSS and its leadership.
IAMC described the demonstration as a broad coalition of New Yorkers from different religious and social backgrounds opposing what they called the RSS’s ideology of Hindu supremacy and its record of violence against religious minorities.
Congressional nominee and former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander joined the protesters outside the venue. “We’ve gathered here to say no to the RSS,” Lander said. “We are angry at Madison Square Garden for hosting this hate-filled fascist rally,” he added.
New York City Council Member Julie Won also criticised Madison Square Garden for hosting Bhagwat, saying New York City rejected hate-based ideologies. She condemned the venue for providing a platform to “the leader of an organisation tied to decades of violence against religious minorities”.
Safa Ahmed, an IAMC board member, addressed the RSS leadership during the demonstration.
“You are being mocked by New York City. You will be remembered as an insecure group of people who could only take pride in their identity through the erasure of another — if you are remembered at all,” she said.
Anuraag Khandelwal of Hindus for Human Rights said the protest was also intended as a rejection of attempts to portray the RSS’s ideological project as one of religious or cultural unity.
“We are here because times are bleak and because we refuse to stay silent,” he said. “Packaging 100 years of Hindu supremacy and minority vilification as a Universal Oneness is some top-tier PR gymnastics.”
Earlier this week, 65 civil rights and interfaith organisations in the US had denounced the event at Madison Square Garden, while more than 1,000 people wrote to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding that Bhagwat be denied entry to the country, according to IAMC.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had also publicly opposed the event. City Council Members Shahana Hanif, Lincoln Restler and Julie Won, along with Lander, had called on Madison Square Garden to cancel the programme.
The protest came three days after USCIRF called for Bhagwat’s visa to be revoked and recommended sanctions against the RSS, citing concerns over violence against Christians, Dalits, Muslims and Sikhs.
The RSS, founded in 1925, is the ideological parent organisation of India’s Hindu nationalist movement. It has long faced criticism from human rights groups and scholars over its Hindutva ideology and the involvement of some of its members and affiliates in violence against religious minorities.
