A viral video making the rounds in India this week captured something the world rarely sees: senior leaders of the radical Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organization caught off guard and unwilling to answer important questions.
RSS stands accused of orchestrating or tolerating attacks on Christians.
On April 23, 2206, as Ram Madhav and Dattatreya Hosabale walked out of the Hudson Institute in Washington, the American journalist Pieter Friedrich was waiting for them. He asked, point-blank, why the RSS stands accused of orchestrating or tolerating attacks on Christians, including violence against nuns, and the mob lynchings of minorities for eating beef. Neither man said a word. They climbed into a waiting SUV and drove off, the questions left unanswered.
Inside the building, only minutes earlier, the mood could not have been more different. The session was titled “New India.” Hosabale, the RSS general secretary, delivered the script the organization now reserves for foreign audiences.
Hinduism, he explained, is not a religion in the conventional sense but an ancient civilization, an inclusive cultural ethos. He rejected accusations of supremacism. With a straight face, he described the RSS as a grassroots movement focused on character-building and national service.
Civilizations allow for a multiplicity of faiths to prosper.
I have no doubt that this is what the RSS would like the world to believe. But it is not the India that millions of Christians, minorities, Dalits, and tribal communities know. If Hinduism is truly a civilization, why is there such an extreme clampdown on the Christian faith? Civilizations allow for a multiplicity of faiths to prosper.
Across several Indian states, particularly in the north, extremist groups continue to disrupt Christian worship, vandalize churches, and harass families simply for praying together. So-called “anti-conversion laws,” now enforced in more than a dozen states, cast a wide and indiscriminate net.
Ordinary acts of faith are now treated as crimes.
A home prayer meeting, the sick and dying gathering to be healed, a personal decision to follow Jesus. These ordinary acts of faith are now treated as crimes.
In the Indian state of Maharashtra, the updated Freedom of Religion law now considers the decisions of just two members of a family to follow Jesus as “mass conversion,” carrying devastating penalties.
These are not safeguards against manipulation and coercion. They’re criminalizing one’s own conscience.
Behind this whole charade is the RSS's long-standing ideological project to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, a nation defined first and foremost by Hindu identity. The RSS speaks of inclusivity, but only for those who accept what it calls Indian (meaning Hindu) culture.
India has never been a religious monolith.
Christians and other minorities have lived in India for nearly 2,000 years. India has never been a religious monolith, but the RSS wants to make it one.
These are no longer just domestic concerns for my beloved India. The current RSS public relations spree in the U.S. is due to serious concerns about the RSS and its affiliates in Western nations. While the RSS-led power structures prevent ordinary Christians, pastors, and Christian organizations from visiting India because of their faith, it clearly has no qualms about spreading its own missionary arm in the West.
In its 2026 Annual Report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom again raised serious alarms about religious freedom in India and recommended targeted sanctions on the RSS and its affiliates for their role in, or tolerance of, severe violations. The Indian government has, predictably, dismissed the report as biased. But dismissing the report does not make the violations disappear.
The RSS... operates in a strange legal twilight.
The RSS leadership has reason to feel the pressure. The organization proudly claims to be the world's largest voluntary NGO. Yet inside India, it operates in a strange legal twilight. It is not registered as a society or a public trust in the traditional sense. It does not file regular income tax returns or publish any detailed annual accounts. Its primary source of funding, voluntary “Guru Dakshina” donations placed before the saffron flag, remains almost entirely opaque.
Compare this with the treatment of other civil society groups. Christian charities, missionary hospitals, and many secular NGOs have been hounded under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, with licenses canceled and operations closed.
The contrast could not be sharper. The RSS stretches across education, media, social service, and politics through a sprawling network of affiliates, wielding enormous influence with almost no accountability.
Its profile and lifestyle have visibly changed since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. The new RSS headquarters in Delhi is by any measure a five-star facility. Where did the money come from? If the answer involves any indirect government favor, why is the same generosity not extended to civil society groups quietly serving India's poorest? Selective application of the rules erodes public trust in every institution it touches.
As India rises... its handling of religious diversity and institutional accountability is being watched.
The awkward silence outside the Hudson Institute was not merely an embarrassing moment for two leaders. It was a small window into a much larger problem. As India rises on the world stage, its handling of religious diversity and institutional accountability is being watched, and rightly so.
Real confidence in one's civilization does not shrink from honest questions or fear the prayers whispered in a Christian or Muslim home. It welcomes scrutiny and applies its laws evenly to every citizen.
For India to fulfill its promise in this century, its most influential non-governmental organization must lead by example. It must embrace the transparency it demands of others, account for its foreign funding, and stop fueling violence and spewing hatred toward religious minorities.
Until that happens, “New India” will remain a slogan, not a reality.
Originally published by Christian Post. Republished with permission.
Archbishop Joseph D’Souza is a human and civil rights activist. He is the founder of Dignity Freedom Network, an organization that advocates for and delivers humanitarian aid to the marginalized and outcastes of South Asia. He is archbishop of the Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India and serves as the President of the All India Christian Council.
