“Hindutva Not Welcome in USA”: Hundreds of New Yorkers Confront RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Hate Event at Madison Square Garden
Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Dalit, Hindu and Jewish New Yorkers rallied outside the arena three days after USCIRF called for Bhagwat’s visa to be revoked.
New York (August 29, 2026) — In a massive show of opposition, hundreds of protesters filled the entrance to Madison Square Garden today, handing the RSS the largest and most humiliating public rejection it has ever faced on American soil. Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of India’s violent fascist Hindu supremacist paramilitary, delivered his address while Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Dalit, Hindu, and Jewish New Yorkers denounced him as a fascist.
The Indian American Muslim Council, the largest US-based advocacy organization of Indian American Muslims, organized the demonstration alongside dozens of other faith and civil rights groups.
Congressional nominee and former City Comptroller Brad Lander stood with the protesters outside the arena. “We’ve gathered here to say no to the RSS,” Lander said. “We are angry at Madison Square Garden for hosting this hate-filled fascist rally.”
“Our City rejects hate-based ideologies,” said New York City Council Member Julie Won, who condemned Madison Square Garden for lending its stage to “the leader of an organization tied to decades of violence against religious minorities.”
Safa Ahmed, IAMC Board Member, addressed the RSS directly: “You are being mocked by New York City. You will be remembered as an insecure group of people who could only take pride in their identity through the erasure of another — if you are remembered at all.”
“We are here because times are bleak and because we refuse to stay silent… Packaging 100 years of Hindu supremacy and minority vilification as a Universal Oneness is some top-tier PR gymnastics,” said Anuraag Khandelwal, from Hindus for Human Rights.
Earlier this week, sixty-five civil rights and interfaith organizations in the U.S. had denounced the RSS’ hate event at Madison Square Garden. Over a thousand Americans wrote directly to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding Bhagwat be denied entry to the U.S. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly opposed the hate event, and Council Members Shahana Hanif, Lincoln Restler, and Julie Won, along with congressional nominee Brad Lander, demanded that MSG cancel it.
Three days before Bhagwat’s event, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called for his visa to be revoked and for sanctions on the RSS, citing its violence against Christians, Dalits, Muslims, and Sikhs.
The RSS is a violent, fascist, Hindu supremacist paramilitary founded in 1925, built on the belief that India belongs to Hindus alone. For decades its offshoots have run lynch mobs that beat Muslims to death, torch churches, and destroy homes, and its affiliates have driven massacres that killed thousands. India has banned the organization three times, including after one of its own murdered Mahatma Gandhi. India’s ruling BJP is its political wing, and the two remain intertwined. USCIRF, Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the UN, Amnesty International and the Congressional Research Service have all documented the RSS’ violent anti- minority record.
IAMC calls on the State Department to revoke Mohan Bhagwat’s visa and impose the targeted sanctions on the RSS that USCIRF has already recommended, including barring its leadership from entering the United States.
