Mohan Bhagwat’s three-country tour of the United States, Canada and Britain comes at a revealing moment for the RSS. As the organisation enters its centenary year, its chief is presenting a remarkably conciliatory face to the world. In New York, at the “Universal Oneness Celebration” in Madison Square Garden, Bhagwat declared: “If any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslim in Bharat, he will not remain Hindu.” Diversity, he said, must be ‘celebrated, respected and accepted’; humanity is one and different religious paths ultimately lead towards the same truth.
These are significant words. They deserve neither reflexive dismissal nor uncritical applause. The real question is whether they represent a substantive evolution in the RSS’s understanding of Indian nationhood,or a new vocabulary for presenting an old ideology to a global audience.
A New Script
Bhagwat’s message was carefully constructed for several audiences. To the Indian diaspora, he stressed that America is their karmabhoomi: “We are in America. We live in America. We earn in America. So, we are American.” To the wider audience, he presented VasudhaivaKutumbakam and ‘unity in diversity’ as India’s civilisational contribution to the world.
The wider programme reinforced that message. Some 180 religious leaders from about 30 countries participated in the interfaith “One World, One Humanity” initiative, calling on communities to stand together when others are threatened or dehumanised. Bhagwat also recalled being asked by Muslim interlocutors what Hindu Rashtra would mean for them and rejected the idea that Hindutva entails expelling Muslims.
There is an important and welcome principle here. Hindu identity need not mean hostility towards minorities, and Hinduism cannot reasonably be equated with hatred of Muslims. But Bhagwat’s formulation raises a deeper constitutional question: Do minorities belong because the majority accepts them, or because citizenship makes them equal owners of the republic?
That distinction matters. A constitutional democracy does not merely promise minorities protection from the majority. It guarantees them equal citizenship irrespective of what the majority thinks.
Owaisi’s Challenge
This is the point on which Bhagwat’s critics have concentrated. Asaduddin Owaisi called the New York statement ‘the oldest trick in the RSS playbook’, arguing that the organisation has historically spoken differently to different audiences. He invoked the writings of V.D. Savarkar, K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar and challenged Bhagwat to publicly recite the relevant passages and let people judge the ideological continuity themselves.
Owaisi’s intervention cannot simply be dismissed as partisan rhetoric. Golwalkar’s We, or Our Nationhood Defined, with its deeply troubling formulations about minorities, was later said to be disowned by the RSS as an expression of an earlier stage of his thinking. Yet Bunch of Thoughts, published much later, continued to identify Muslims, Christians and Communists as ‘internal threats’.
The serious question, therefore, is not whether Bhagwat can be defeated in a quotation contest. It is whether the RSS has genuinely revised its conception of the Indian nation.
The Test is India
That question cannot be answered in New York alone. It has to be tested against the political and social environment in India, where the BJP,the principal political expression of the wider Sangh ecosystem,has exercised sustained governmental power.
India’s record has generated persistent concerns over religious discrimination, hate speech, communal violence, punitive demolitions, cow vigilantism, restrictions associated with anti-conversion laws and disputes over places of worship. Human-rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have documented increasing pressure on minorities, critics, journalists and civil-society organisations. India Hate Lab recorded more than 1,300 hate-speech events targeting religious minorities in 2025, overwhelmingly Muslims.
The Supreme Court’s 2024 judgment on demolitions is particularly relevant. It rejected the use of executive demolition as punishment, stressing due process, the presumption of innocence and the rule of law. The judgment was, in effect, a reminder that constitutional citizenship cannot be suspended because an individual belongs to an unpopular or politically vulnerable community.
None of this means that every action of the BJP government is directed by the RSS, nor that every BJP supporter shares an identical ideological position. But the BJP’s long institutional relationship with the Sangh Parivar makes its record relevant when the RSS seeks to explain what its vision of India means.
Criticism at Home
Bhagwat’s words therefore triggered sharp reactions from Indian opposition leaders and civil-society figures. Kapil Sibal argued that the RSS chief appeared to accept diversity abroad while failing to demonstrate the same commitment at home. Sanjay Raut asked why Bhagwat could not say these things in India. TMC MP Sagarika Ghose called the message ‘chilling duplicity’, pointing to the conduct of Sangh-linked organisations and the continuing political marginalisation of Muslims. Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed accused the RSS of having a history of communalism.
The criticism is not merely about whether Bhagwat’s words are sincere. It is about whether they have consequences.A particularly useful formulation came from the constitutional perspective: Muslims do not belong in India because a Hindu majority permits them to belong; they belong because the Constitution of India belongs to them equally. The same principle applies to every religious and linguistic minority.This is where the distinction between tolerance and equality becomes crucial. Tolerance is something a majority can grant and withdraw. Equality is a constitutional right.
A Divided Diaspora
The controversy travelled with Bhagwat. In New York, more than 60 civil-rights, religious and community organisations opposed his appearance. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he did not support the event’s ideology and described the pluralistic, secular India he knew as one in which everyone belonged. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom called for possible targeted sanctions against RSS members and suggested that Bhagwat’s visa be reconsidered. India rejected the commission as biased and lacking credibility. Significantly, USCIRF chair Asif Mahmood subsequently indicated that he remained willing to engage directly with Bhagwat.
The American debate also demonstrated that the Indian diaspora is far from politically homogeneous. Supporters portrayed the visit as a legitimate assertion of Hindu identity and an opportunity for dialogue. Critics saw it as an attempt to internationalise and normalise Hindutva.
Canada produced a similar divide. Before Bhagwat’s Toronto appearance, 267 organisations asked the Canadian government to deny him entry, citing concerns about the RSS’s record and ideology. Other Indo-Canadian organisations responded that branding the RSS as fascist risked unfairly associating ordinary Canadian Hindus with political extremism.
That disagreement is important. The controversy is not simply Hindu versus Muslim, India versus the West, or supporters versus opponents of Hindutva. It is also an argument within Hindu and Indian diasporic communities over what Hindu identity should mean in a plural democracy.
And Now Britain
The British leg of Bhagwat’s tour has already attracted scrutiny even before its substantive programme begins. More than 20 diaspora and civil-society organisations have called for opposition to the visit. Kashmir-focused groups have urged the British authorities to review his entry, while Labour MP Nadia Whittome asked the Home Secretary whether his visit had been assessed under the UK’s ‘unacceptable behaviours’ criteria.
These interventions do not establish that Bhagwat has been denied entry or that the British government has adopted the critics’ position. They demonstrate, however, that the RSS’s international reputation has become a matter of public and political debate well beyond India.
The GenZ Question
There is another reason the timing of the tour deserves attention: Bhagwat’s recent interventions on India’s GenZ protests.In August, he said that young protesters had genuine grievances, that democratic protest was legitimate and that they should not automatically be branded anti-national. His remarks were unusually sympathetic towards a generation increasingly distrustful of established political structures. The protests had already produced serious political consequences, including the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
The RSS’s centenary global outreach was clearly planned independently, so it would be speculative to claim that the foreign tour was conceived as GenZ damage control. But reputation management and political repositioning may plausibly form part of its wider purpose. The messaging is strikingly consistent: young Indians should be heard; minorities should feel they belong; the world should see the RSS as inclusive and universalist.
Rhetoric Versus Transformation
Bhagwat’s changing rhetoric has itself attracted attention from journalists and political observers. Shekhar Gupta has described the RSS chief as adopting an unexpectedly moderate public persona while cautioning the BJP about youth anger. K.B.S. Sidhu, writing from a constitutional perspective, has made a more fundamental point: a critic should be able to acknowledge a good sentence even while examining a bad record.That is the standard Bhagwat’s remarks deserve.
It would be intellectually lazy to insist that nothing has changed simply because the RSS has a controversial history. Organisations can evolve. Leaders can revise positions. Political movements can moderate their language, and sometimes their substance. But the opposite conclusion would be equally premature: that a handful of conciliatory speeches proves a fundamental transformation.
The evidence must come from conduct. Does the RSS unequivocally reject discrimination against Muslims? Does it affirm equal citizenship without qualification? Does it oppose violence and intimidation by organisations associated with the wider Sangh family? Does it accept constitutional secularism not merely as a legal arrangement but as a principle of equal belonging? And will its political ecosystem reflect these commitments?
The Constitutional Standard
Bhagwat has opened an important conversation. His declaration that a Hindu who wants a Muslim-free India ceases, in his formulation, to embody Hinduism is certainly preferable to rhetoric of exclusion. But the constitutional standard is higher still.
A Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or atheist citizen does not belong to India because the majority is generous enough to accommodate them. Nor does a Hindu belong because the state recognises Hindu civilisation. Every citizen belongs equally because the Constitution makes the Republic equally theirs.
That is why the most important test of Bhagwat’s new script will not be its reception in Madison Square Garden, Toronto or London. It will be whether the language of universal oneness travels back with him to India,and whether it changes the political and institutional realities against which millions of Indians experience citizenship.
Universal oneness is an admirable civilisational ideal. Universal citizenship is a constitutional obligation. India needs both.