Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers participate in the centenary celebrations of the Hindu nationalist organization at the Reshimbagh ground in Nagpur on October 2, 2025.
Idris Mohammed/AFP via Getty Images
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Idris Mohammed/AFP via Getty Images
The world’s largest right-wing group is in India.
That group is an all-male, Hindu nationalist organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It is better known by its abbreviation RSS.
Its goal is to destroy the Founding Fathers’ vision of India as a secular country, where people of many religions live.
Some of its members and some of its affiliates have been implicated – or accused – of inciting attacks against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. Famously, a former RSS member assassinated Mohandas Gandhi, one of the most famous Indians in history, in 1948.
Critics say Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is particularly hostile toward Muslims and borrows from the organization’s Hindu nationalist ideology.
The movement’s leaders rarely speak to the Western press, which is why it came as a surprise when a lobbyist representing one of those leaders asked NPR to set up an interview.
Dattatreya Hosabale, the RSS general secretary, more or less the organization’s second-in-command, was in Washington DC this week for a talk at the conservative think tank Hudson Institute.
NPR’s Rob Schmitz spoke with Hosabale to learn why he was in the nation’s capital, and why he was talking to the press.
Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue play button above.
