Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers take part in the Hindu nationalist organisation’s centenary celebrations at Reshimbagh Ground in Nagpur on October 2, 2025.
IDREES MOHAMMED/AFP via Getty Images
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IDREES MOHAMMED/AFP via Getty Images
The largest right-wing group in the world is in India.
That group is an all-male, Hindu Nationalist organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It’s better known by its acronym, the RSS.
Its goal is to undo the founding fathers’ vision of India as a secular country, home to people with many faiths.
Some of its members and those of some of its sister organizations have been implicated in – or accused of – instigating attacks against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. Famously, a former RSS member assassinated one of the most famous Indians in history, Mohandas Gandhi, in 1948.
Critics say Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is hostile to Muslims in particular and borrows from the organization’s Hindu nationalist ideology.
The leaders of the movement rarely talk to the Western press, which is why it was surprising when a lobbyist representing one of those leaders asked NPR to set up an interview.
The General Secretary of the RSS, more or less the second in command of the organization, Dattatreya Hosabale, was in Washington D.C. this week for a talk at the conservative think tank the Hudson Institute.
NPR’s Rob Schmitz spoke with Hosabale to learn why he was in the nation’s capital, and why he was speaking with the press.
Listen to the full interview by clicking on the blue play button above.
