| First Sentence |
Though India's largest religious minority is Muslim, the RSS network has victimized a host of
other non-Hindu groups such as Sikhs and Christians, along with members of Dalit communi-
ties (pejoratively known as "untouchables"). Although Muslims are a central target of the RSS's
supremacist actions, they are, as this report shows, by no means the network's only target in
India and across the world.
It is therefore vital that law and policy makers around the world who guard the stability of liber-
al, multicultural democracy, become aware of the RSS's global machinations and networks, as
well as how its overall apparatus extends into Canada while posing challenges to our commit-
ment to tolerance, understanding, and peace.
This paper raises concerns about the following aspects of the RSS's activities in Canada:
Humanitarian Relief, Social Services, and Fundraising: The RSS is the core, parent mem-
ber of a network of related organizations known as the Sangh Parivar. A significant segment of
the network is devoted to "sewa,” (sometimes written as “seva”) or service, the term used for
both humanitarian relief efforts abroad as well as social and health services provided within In-
dia, particularly in its remote and tribal regions. These sewa-related organs help legitimize and
perpetuate the RSS's ideologies, while entrenching its wider presence under the guise of an
ideologically neutral humanitarian network. Various sewa organizations abroad exist primarily
to fundraise for efforts linked to the RSS in India. (Many groups outside of the RSS and Sangh
Parivar perform legitimate and non-politicized sewa, including many Sikh relief agencies who
also use the term to describe their own aid efforts. Our focus here is on the RSS's use of sewa
to further its Hindutva ideologies.)
Education, Ideology, Shakhas: Various Sangh (RSS-related) organizations are operational in
countries across the world, including Canada. Chief among this effort are educational chap-
ters, or shakhas, that prepare both youth and adults through ideological training, ceremony,
and religious instruction-all linked to the supremacist ideas of the RSS's founders and ideo-
logues.
Global Political Influence: Much of the RSS's progressive drift from the margins of Indian
and Hindu society towards the mainstream has to do with its main political organ, the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP)'s two successive federal election wins in 2014 and 2019, when the Hindu
nationalist party captured majorities in Parliament. The BJP also projects its interests abroad
through a network of lobbying organizations called the Overseas Friends of the BJP (OFBJP),
among other strategies and tactics.
4Islamophobic, Anti-Sikh, and Casteist Rhetoric: Sadly, yet predictably, the presence and
entrenchment of the RSS and its affiliates in Canada has already resulted in a litany of Islam-
ophobic, anti-Sikh, and casteist incidents that resemble the communal tensions being exploit-
ed and exacerbated by the RSS in India. This report includes a detailed list of these incidents,
which represent only a sampling of a disturbing trend that illustrates the effects of RSS ideolo-
gy in Canada, as well as those who these ideologies seek to victimize.
5
Hindutva-inspired activists celebrate the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya on December 1992. AFP/AFP/Getty Images
(Taken from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/03/706808616/the-powerful-group-shaping-the-rise-of-hindu-nationalism-in-india) |
