FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: [email protected] — Safa Ahmed, Indian American Muslim Council
New York, August 27, 2026: Sixty-five organizations today released a joint statement denouncing the U.S. visit of Mohan Bhagwat, supreme leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, two days before his Aug. 29 appearance at Madison Square Garden. Signatories include national civil rights groups, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Dalit organizations, and a wide array of Asian American and South Asian organizations.
Bhagwat is here because Hindu nationalists’ efforts to lobby the US Congress failed. In 2025, the RSS paid Washington lobbyists $330,000 to introduce it to members of Congress. The filing went in under domestic lobbying rules rather than the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which would have required disclosing whom the lobbyists met and what they said, and the work was routed through a second firm so the RSS’s name never appeared as the client. After reporters obtained the filings., the contract was terminated and the paperwork retroactively amended.
The statement also names why the RSS’s presence is unwelcome, why Hindu supremacy is not just an Indian problem, and what RSS affiliates have already done in the United States. The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America sponsored a 38-day speaking tour for Kajal Hindusthani, who told an audience in Edison, New Jersey that Muslims were “braindead zombies” and called for boycotting Muslim businesses. The Hindu American Foundation aired a podcast segment joking about a foreign government’s attempt to assassinate a U.S. citizen on American soil, and campaigned successfully for vetoes of two California bills, one on caste discrimination and one on transnational repression. And the Global Hindu Heritage Foundation has held fundraisers to demolish churches.
Quotes from Signatories
“As a rabbi who has spent years studying how the Jewish nationalist movement has essentialized and bent our traditions into a justification for domination, I see it echoed directly in the RSS’s playbook. Hindutva does to Hinduism what Zionism has done to Judaism: it takes a plural, ancient civilization and narrows it into a weapon for ethnic supremacy and state violence. Mohan Bhagwat leads a paramilitary movement that has spent a century organizing hatred against religious minorities under the guise of a synthetic Hindu nationalism. Madison Square Garden should not become a stage for that project, and I’m proud to stand with the Savera Coalition in opposition to this visit.”
— Rabbi Andrue Kahn, Executive Director, American Council for Judaism
“Faith Beyond Religious Nationalism means we cannot allow religion to be used as a weapon. If Boko Haram, the Patriot Front or Neo-Nazi organizations were to schedule a cross-country speaking tour meeting with generous business leaders, public policy influencers, and new recruits, how would we respond? And how would we respond if these groups promoted that they represented millions of faithful, religious practitioners not only in their country of origin but loyal followers in the nations they were visiting? The RSS is the world’s largest paramilitary organization with hundreds of cells functioning across borders. Christians, along with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and oppressed caste Dalits cannot stay silent.“
— Rev. Neal Christie, Faith Beyond Religious Nationalism
We strongly denounce RSS, a fascist organization & its hatemonger in chief, Mohan Bhagwat, neither of whom are welcome in Los Angeles.
— Shakeel Syed, South Asian Network
We cannot allow a foreign ideology of hate and religious supremacy to take root in the United States. The RSS’s ideology has already inflicted deep divisions on Indian society, and we are increasingly seeing efforts to import those same divisions into American communities and institutions. America’s diversity and pluralism are its strengths. We oppose Mohan Bhagwat’s visit because we cannot stand by while an exclusionary foreign nationalist movement seeks legitimacy and influence here, threatening the social fabric that holds our communities together.
— Sareeta Pandey, Save America from Hindutva
Signatories pledge to deny the RSS and its affiliates use of their institutions, stages, honors and proclamations, and they ask elected officials to turn down meetings and photo opportunities with Bhagwat. The statement called on New York’s mayor to say publicly what he thinks of the Garden event, which he did at a press conference.
More than 100 organizations signed a similar warning about Hindu supremacy in 2024. Canadian civil society groups and two Members of Parliament have raised objections to Bhagwat’s Toronto stop later this week.
Full statement and signatory list: https://www.wearesavera.org/take-action/statement-mohan-bhagwat/