It is the best of times for the protesters gathered outside Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, exposing the hollow nature of the “universal oneness” message peddled by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat. Yet, it is the worst of times to try selling that majoritarian message to the saffron-clad supporters inside the stadium. What we witness is a stark, classical division that even Charles Dickens could not have envisioned when writing A Tale of Two Cities.
Two distinct classes confront each other: inside stand the upper-caste elites driven by the hierarchies of the Manusmriti; outside stand the Dalits armed with the emancipatory philosophy of the Annihilation of Caste. Inside are the adherents of a rigid Hindutva; outside are the Khitabia (People of the Book) defending their rights. Inside are those who weaponize religious symbols; outside are Christians holding the cross. Inside is an empty majoritarian slogan; outside are progressive forces demanding a concrete economic program.
This deep division is a modern continuation of a dark historical legacy. It was the British colonial empire that encouraged the creation of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1925—the ideological predecessor of the RSS... “Divide and Rule” was the colonial motto, and rule they did. Today, the RSS and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), deploy that exact same colonial tactic. The historical reality is that the caste system was created and implemented through the codes of the Manusmriti, and the RSS operates as the guardian angel of that oppressive architecture, relying on structural violence to enforce it. While India historically positioned itself as a non-aligned nation that condemned international apartheid, it remains a crying shame that a brutal domestic caste apartheid is alive and kicking at home. It is upon this fractured foundation that the RSS and the BJP seek to construct a Hindu Samraj (empire).
What, then, is this version of “universal oneness”? Is it not merely a thin veil for the type of universal dominance that Hitler’s Germany conceived with its myth of Aryan supremacy? Look no further than the relentless grassroots violence directed against Christians and Muslims in India today. Is this bloody persecution what harmony looks like in the perspective of a Hindu empire?
When Jawaharlal Nehru famously declared in 1947 that at the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India would awake to life and freedom, he envisioned a nation anchored in pluralism. I ask the RSS: Are you leading us toward that freedom, or are your empty Sanskrit-colored slogans leading us away from it, masking bankrupt economic policies and a systematic dismantling of the freedom of speech?
Any regime that scuttles free speech exhibits the primary symptom of fascism. That is precisely what Hitler did. Today, the vast majority of India’s independent media outlets have been bought out and monopolized by corporate allies like Adani. This is not the India in which I was born and raised. During my youth, no one could have imagined that the RSS and the BJP would capture absolute state power. They achieved this by weaponizing an anti-Muslim platform to inflame the sentiments of the majority—a classic adoption of the old British tactic. Even the Sikh community has not been spared, fiercely resisting the RSS’s aggressive attempts to assimilate them against their will.
atch out dear Toronto and British diaspora of Mr. Bhagwat’s recycled familiar, boilerplate rhetoric in New York, stating that “if any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslim in Bharat, he will not remain Hindu”. Contemporary British observers and independent journalists—such as Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman—explicitly described the RSS in September 1947 as an “unofficial Hindu fascist army” actively hunting and clearing Muslim populations from Delhi neighborhoods. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru echoed this evaluation, identifying the RSS as an organized threat to the secular fabric of the newly forming state. But could his performance in New York mask the bloody, everyday reality on the ground of state-sanctioned bulldozing of Muslim homes, the targeting of Christian churches, and the rise of right-wing Gau Rakshak (cow protection) vigilante groups that assault Dalits with total legal impunity?
This struggle is personal. Alongside my Dalit colleagues and supported by the broader student body at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, I led a historic national anti-caste movement against institutionalized discrimination. Modeling our campus resistance strategy directly on France’s May 1968 Sorbonne student revolution, I underwent an indefinite 10-day hunger strike. I paid the heavy price of expulsion for my defiance, but our sacrifices forced wide-ranging reforms for millions of marginalized Dalits.
From the historic days of the anti-colonial freedom struggle to the contemporary defiance of Generation Z youth filling the streets of New Delhi at Jantar Mantar, the fight for India’s soul endures. So I say to you, Mr. Bhagwat: You are losing the argument at home, which is why you have traveled to New York to lecture the diaspora. Do you believe the West is blind to your sinister motives? If you possess a conscience, do a profound soul-search and dismantle your Hindutva philosophy. Your organization has outlived the British Empire that fostered its birth. Good riddance to the Manusmriti. It is time for you, the RSS, and the BJP to go. India belongs to all Indians, not just to the RSS.
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