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USCIRF urges Washington to shun high-level engagement with Sangh leaders amid renewed scrutiny of the Sangh\u2019s deep organisational, ideological and political links with India\u2019s ruling BJP and continuing concerns over the treatment of religious minorities<\/p>\n
Washington,: The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the Trump administration to impose targeted sanctions on members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) found responsible for religious-freedom violations and avoid extending high-level diplomatic courtesies to its leaders, as RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat prepares to visit the United States.<\/p>\n
According to Kashmir Media Service, the intervention comes ahead of Bhagwat\u2019s scheduled appearance at the \u201cUniversal Oneness Celebrations\u201d, organised by the American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (AHEAD) in New York on August 29. His wider overseas tour is expected to begin on August 25 and include the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as part of the RSS\u2019s centenary-year outreach.<\/p>\n
In remarks shared by USCIRF on X, Commission Chair Asif Mahmood said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a member of the RSS, which he described as an umbrella organisation whose affiliated groups had perpetrated attacks on religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia\u2019s PM Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an Indian umbrella organization whose sub-groups have perpetrated attacks on religious minorities,\u201d Mahmood said, referring to Bhagwat\u2019s planned US visit.<\/p>\n
USCIRF Commissioner Gene Mills said RSS leaders should not be honoured with high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies, even when they were affiliated with the Indian government. Instead, he said, the US should focus on imposing sanctions on RSS members found responsible for violations of freedom of religion or belief.<\/p>\n
The latest remarks are not an isolated intervention. They follow years of increasingly sharp criticism by USCIRF of religious-freedom conditions in India and reflect a broader pattern in the Commission\u2019s annual assessments.<\/p>\n
In its 2026 Annual Report, released in March, USCIRF again recommended that the US State Department designate India a \u201cCountry of Particular Concern\u201d (CPC) for what it described as systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. It also recommended targeted sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for severe violations, with the RSS and India\u2019s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) specifically named in connection with those recommendations.<\/p>\n
The 2026 recommendation continued a position USCIRF has maintained for several years. In its 2025 Annual Report, the Commission again recommended CPC designation for India, citing what it described as the toleration of systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. Later that year, USCIRF released a detailed issue update examining the relationship between Hindu nationalist groups, including the RSS, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).<\/p>\n
USCIRF had made a similar recommendation in its 2024 Annual Report, which said religious-freedom conditions in India had continued to deteriorate. The report cited discriminatory policies, hate speech, communal violence and the targeting of religious minorities, including Muslims and Christians. It recommended that Washington designate India a CPC and impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for severe religious-freedom violations.<\/p>\n
The Commission\u2019s criticism has also extended beyond its annual reports. An October 2024 country update highlighted killings, mob attacks, arbitrary arrests of religious leaders and the demolition of homes and places of worship, while alleging that legal and political measures were increasingly being used to target and disenfranchise religious minorities.<\/p>\n
More recently, USCIRF\u2019s November 2025 report, Systematic Religious Persecution in India, examined what it described as the interaction between India\u2019s political, social and criminal justice systems and the freedom of religion or belief, with particular attention to the relationship between Hindu nationalist organisations such as the RSS and the BJP.<\/p>\n
The Commission\u2019s latest call therefore places Bhagwat\u2019s American tour against a backdrop of sustained concern within the US religious-freedom watchdog over the treatment of minorities in India.<\/p>\n
The Commission\u2019s concerns come against the backdrop of a long and deeply documented relationship between the RSS and India\u2019s ruling BJP. The BJP emerged from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which was formed in consultation with the RSS and staffed by its organisers. Over the decades, leaders and cadres have moved between the RSS and its affiliates and the BJP, while the broader Sangh Parivar has provided ideological, organisational and grassroots support to the party.<\/p>\n
The evidence is strongest regarding historical links, leadership recruitment, ideological convergence and voter mobilisation. There is documented association of several senior BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with the RSS or its affiliated organisations.<\/p>\n
Modi was a full-time RSS pracharak before being assigned to BJP work, a background he acknowledged in 2011. Home Minister Amit Shah attended RSS shakhas and entered politics through the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), while Defence Minister Rajnath Singh joined the RSS at a young age before entering Jana Sangh politics. Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Manohar Lal Khattar also have documented RSS connections, with Khattar having served as a full-time pracharak before moving into BJP politics. The report also documents early Sangh or RSS links in the political backgrounds of Education Minister Pralhad Joshi, former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister Shobha Karandlaje and former Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, illustrating the continuing movement of personnel between the Sangh network and the BJP.<\/p>\n
The RSS anchors a vast organisational network through the wider Sangh Parivar. Its principal affiliates include the BJP in electoral politics, the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in religious mobilisation, the Bajrang Dal in youth and street-level activism, the ABVP in student politics and Vidya Bharati in education. While these organisations are legally distinct, their connections are reflected in shared ideology, overlapping leadership, cadre circulation and consultation.<\/p>\n
RSS networks have also played an extensive role in voter outreach and electoral mobilisation. The RSS cadres have assisted in booth-level organisation, voter-list management, door-to-door outreach and turnout drives, particularly in areas where BJP structures were comparatively weak.<\/p>\n
There have also been documented consultations between BJP leaders, ministers and RSS officials on government programmes, education and social policy. People with Sangh backgrounds have been appointed to institutions including the Indian Council of Historical Research, the National Book Trust and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.<\/p>\n
The USCIRF\u2019s latest remarks must also be viewed against a wider record of concern over the treatment of religious minorities in India particularly the 2002 Gujarat violence, the 2020 Delhi riots, anti-conversion laws, cow-protection violence and other policies and developments that rights groups have said disproportionately affected Muslims, Christians and other minorities.<\/p>\n
There is a clear convergence between longstanding Sangh objectives and major policy outcomes under BJP-led governments. Among the developments include the effective removal of Jammu and Kashmir\u2019s special constitutional status through the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019; the consecration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya in 2024 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat; stronger anti-conversion laws in several BJP-ruled states; stricter cattle-protection measures; and the Citizenship Amendment Act, which provides an accelerated citizenship route for specified non-Muslim communities from neighbouring countries. There have been textbook changes, appointments and Vidya Bharati\u2019s input as part of a broader effort to promote Hindu civilisational education, while versions of the Uniform Civil Code have been implemented in some BJP-ruled jurisdictions and remain a national policy objective. KMS-6H<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
USCIRF urges Washington to shun high-level engagement with Sangh leaders amid renewed scrutiny of the Sangh\u2019s deep organisational, ideological and political links with India\u2019s ruling BJP and continuing concerns over the treatment of religious minorities Washington,: The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the Trump administration to impose targeted sanctions on members …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":208570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"yoast_head":"\n