IAMC Condemns Deception Behind Bhagwat Event as Two Leading NYC Faith Leaders Say They Were Misled
Rev. Adriene Thorne says she would never have participated had RSS connection been disclosed; Imam Shamsi Ali says he felt “deceived and entrapped”
WASHINGTON, DC — September 3, 2026
The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) condemns the deliberate deception organizers used to recruit prominent New York faith leaders to the August 29 events featuring Hindu supremacist RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat.
The New York Times reported today that the leaders were never told who was behind the gatherings. The Times reviewed a dozen emails organizers sent to those leaders across July and August and found no mention of Bhagwat or the RSS anywhere in them.
Two of the leaders have now repudiated their participation. Rev. Adriene Thorne, Senior Minister of the historic Riverside Church, and Dr. Imam Shamsi Ali, director of the Jamaica Muslim Center of Queens and a leading Muslim and interfaith voice in New York, describe the same concealment.
Bawa Jain’s claim to the Times that he decided to honor Bhagwat only last Friday does not withstand scrutiny. He hosted the event at The Pierre, the hotel where Bhagwat was staying. Hindu organizations including HinduPACT themselves claim the visit had been publicized for weeks, and it drew a press conference at City Hall and criticism from Mayor Mamdani.
Organizers approached respected Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religious leaders under the banner of “One World, One Humanity,” emphasizing peace, human dignity and interfaith harmony, while withholding the crucial fact that Mohan Bhagwat would be at the center of the larger event.
“This was not an innocent omission or a failure of communication,” IAMC said. “The organizers wanted the moral credibility of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other faith leaders standing alongside Mohan Bhagwat. They obtained that credibility by withholding precisely the information that would have caused these leaders to refuse to participate. That is deception, and it represents an appalling abuse of interfaith trust.”
Rev. Thorne has released a video statement describing her appearance alongside Bhagwat at Madison Square Garden as a “terrible mistake.” She said her presence created the false impression that she or Riverside Church endorsed Bhagwat, the RSS or its supremacist ideology.
Thorne said she received 10 emails over approximately six weeks from an organization calling itself the World Council of Religious Leaders. The outreach repeatedly presented August 29 as an international interfaith initiative centered on peace, reconciliation, human dignity and religious cooperation.
Thorne has made clear that had she known the true nature of the Madison Square Garden event, she would never have participated. She has rejected any suggestion that her appearance represented support for Bhagwat, the RSS or Hindu supremacy.
Now, Imam Shamsi Ali has revealed that he was subjected to strikingly similar deception.
“My attendance at that event was a serious error in judgment,” Ali said. “I express my deep regret and I categorically reject any association of my name with the event or any agreement resulting from it.”
Ali said he was invited by Bawa Jain and Dileepji Kumar of Yoga International USA to a supposedly historic gathering under the theme “One World, One Humanity.” He was told that prominent international religious figures, including Muslim World League Secretary-General Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, would participate.
“At no time in our meetings or in the official invitation was it disclosed that the controversial leader of India’s RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, would be the central guest,” Ali said.
Ali attended the interfaith gathering at The Pierre Hotel. But once he learned the true nature of the event, he refused to attend its continuation at Madison Square Garden.
“Had I known the event was organized to honor Mohan Bhagwat, I would have declined immediately,” Ali said. “His rhetoric of peace at the event is lip service that contradicts the reality on the ground, where Muslims and other minorities in India face discrimination and violence as a result of the ideology he promotes.”
Ali was even more explicit about what happened: “I felt deceived and entrapped by the lack of transparency from the organizer.” He has apologized to the community and reaffirmed his commitment to interfaith work based on “honesty and justice.”
For IAMC, the fact that two prominent faith leaders from two different religious traditions independently describe essentially the same concealment raises grave questions about how the entire interfaith component of Bhagwat’s New York visit was assembled.
“The organizers called their event ‘Universal Oneness,’ but there can be no genuine interfaith dialogue built on deception,” IAMC said. “Rev. Thorne says she was misled. Imam Shamsi Ali says he was ‘deceived and entrapped.’ Their accounts expose the dishonesty behind the effort to surround Mohan Bhagwat with respected American religious leaders and portray him as a champion of interfaith harmony.”
The deception is especially egregious because Bhagwat heads the RSS, the ideological center of the Hindu nationalist movement in India. The RSS and organizations associated with the broader Hindutva movement have been implicated in violence and persecution targeting Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and other minorities.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has taken the extraordinary step of recommending targeted sanctions against the RSS for its “responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom,” including asset freezes and restrictions on entry into the United States.
The attempt to use Riverside Church’s moral stature is particularly troubling. Riverside has a historic record of standing against racism, religious supremacy and injustice and is the church from whose pulpit Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his landmark “Beyond Vietnam” address.
IAMC calls on every Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and other faith leader who was invited to or participated in the August 29 gatherings to disclose what organizers told them—and, crucially, what they did not tell them—about Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS and AHEAD.
