FROM MADISON SQUARE TO PARLIAMENT SQUARE: THE FLAWED GEOPOLITICS OF HINDUTVA DIPLOMACY
Narayana Rao Rampilla
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington to meet with President Trump immediately following the BRICS Summit signals a heavy pivot toward G2 bilateralism.
But what of the Global South? When Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration recently hosted the 18th annual BRICS Summit in New Delhi, it mirrored a deep-rooted historical precedent. Decades earlier, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi hosted the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit. Consequently, India’s contemporary alignment with multipolar power blocs is not a novel invention; it is a direct evolution of the nation’s deeply established tradition of strategic autonomy.
This tradition dates back to the 1955 Bandung Conference, where Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Josip Broz Tito united around the foundational principles of global solidarity. By anchoring its geopolitical identity in South-South dialogue, India has historically maintained structural independence, rightfully asserting its sovereign position as a leading global voice without tethering itself to any single Western or Eastern bloc.
Compare that historic framework to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s recent tour of the West. For a non-state ideological actor to project an independent, parallel cultural diplomacy across Western capitals introduces an operational mismatch with India’s established, secular state-to-state framework and its commitment to South-South dialogue. It raises critical questions: does this outreach merely seek external validation, or is it a knee-jerk reaction attempting to manage the international fallout from growing domestic unrest, such as the youth-led protests witnessed at Jantar Mantar?
As Mohan Bhagwat concludes his high-profile global centenary tour—spanning Madison Square Garden, an itinerary in Toronto, and London’s “Celebration of Oneness”—a calculated new chapter in India’s diaspora diplomacy is being written. The RSS is actively attempting to refashion its image for an English-speaking, Western audience. By choosing the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to initiate direct dialogues with global academic institutions, think tanks, and media outlets, the organization seeks to bypass and neutralize domestic political opposition.
However, a stark disconnect characterized the tour. Mr. Bhagwat was merely preaching to the choir inside the venues while a mosaic of opposition groups actively protested outside. Contrary to the propaganda of his followers, he is no Swami Vivekananda. When Vivekananda addressed the Parliament of the World’s Religions on September 11, 1893, his opening words, “Sisters and Brothers of America,” captivated the globe. Operating under the yoke of British colonialism, when Western perceptions of India were distorted through the lens of Anglophobia, Vivekananda’s oratorical triumph was heralded by mainstream American journalism, including the New York Herald, the Boston Evening Transcript, and the Chicago Tribune.
Conversely, no mainstream Western newspapers heralded or praised Mohan Bhagwat’s recent speeches. Instead, the tour generated distinct friction. Several prominent American Christian and interfaith leaders publicly stated they felt “betrayed” and “deceived,” claiming that organizers intentionally omitted Bhagwat’s name and the RSS identity from invitations to trick them into a political photo opportunity. This speaks volumes, given the RSS’s documented history of majoritarian postures toward Muslims, Christians, Dalits, women, and other marginalized minorities.
A deep-rooted axiom in Indian folklore dictates that you must win at home before you can win abroad. In international relations, historical experience consistently reinforces the principle that a nation’s foreign policy is merely an outward projection of its domestic politics. The volatile Hindutva politics of the RSS and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), remain structurally anchored in an anachronistic Manusmriti worldview, and this transatlantic itinerary exposes their internal contradictions.
Upon returning to India, the “universal oneness” preached by Mr. Bhagwat to Western audiences was swiftly abandoned. In his subsequent Lucknow address, Mr. Bhagwat declared that traditional frameworks of communal harmony are fundamentally flawed. This ideological double standard is not a matter of speculation; it was explicitly documented in national coverage by The Hindu (“Forgetting Hindu sentiments led to Partition: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat”). The report detailed his formal assertion that conventional concepts of “Hindu-Muslim unity” are misleading, while implying that the security of religious minorities is conditional upon their assimilation into Hindutva as the non-negotiable, overarching national identity.
This ideological whiplash betrays the anxiety and desperation of the RSS. Having lost the argument to vibrant, youth-led Gen Z protests at Jantar Mantar, the ideological harbinger of the ruling BJP is traversing the West in a state of strategic disorientation. My previous analytical features in ZNetwork and the INSAF Bulletin during Mr. Bhagwat’s prior visit to Madison Square Garden exposed the subtext of these foreign tours. Historically, the creation of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1925—the predecessor to the RSS—and the All India Muslim League was encouraged by British colonizers as part of a classic “divide and rule” strategy. Today, the RSS-BJP matrix has outlived its historical utility.
One must ask: do the RSS and BJP possess an empirical economic program to address the material crises facing India? With structural underemployment and youth unemployment exceeding 10%, a public education system in severe doldrums, and ordinary citizens grappling with deep economic precarity, how can a public relations campaign aimed at affluent diaspora communities resolve material realities on the ground? During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin strategically utilized his diplomatic presence in France to foster a revolutionary transformation at home. The RSS is attempting the exact reverse: deploying diaspora optics abroad to subdue internal dissent and salvage lost ground among the domestic youth. Theirs is not a revolutionary struggle; it is a defensive reaction against a Gen Z-led push for accountability.
How can the RSS-BJP alignment fulfill its grand national projection of achieving a fully “developed nation” status by 2047—the centenary of India’s independence—while maintaining an economic framework that disproportionately concentrates wealth within a small corporate elite? Trickle-down economics has failed globally, and a top-heavy system cannot substitute for authentic, bottom-up economic empowerment.
Furthermore, the persistence of caste apartheid in the twenty-first century stands in direct contradiction to India’s historic foreign policy principles of non-alignment and its proud legacy of condemning systemic apartheid within the United Nations and global human rights forums. Historically, when Emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism, India became a Buddhist country, similar to the Roman Empire when it embraced Christianity. Subsequently, orthodox priestly elites (Brahmins) systematically co-opted Buddhism, absorbing the Buddha into the Hindu pantheon as an avatar to revive a hierarchical caste order.
What is more, when Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the Dalits, led millions to convert to Buddhism in 1956, he explicitly included the 22 Vows. Among them, Vow Number 5 states: “I do not and will not believe that Lord Buddha was the incarnation of Vishnu. I believe this to be sheer madness and false propaganda.” This is not to say that conversion into Buddhism is the singular panacea, but rather to point out the structural fallacy inherent in the Manusmriti worldview. Crucially, the Manusmriti explicitly dictates that “no woman is eligible for freedom.” This epitomizes a rigid patriarchal hegemony, and it is time for a permanent departure from the Manusmriti mindset; it remains a disease born of a bygone feudal era.
Ultimately, if the architectural legacy of Bandung and the Non-Aligned Movement teaches us anything, it is that true civilizational authority cannot be imported via a colonial knee-jerk reliance on Western public relations. India cannot command genuine respect within the global community if its projected advancement mimics an unvarnished system of economic disparity—dispensing mere alms for the impoverished while securing unprecedented riches for the ultra-wealthy. True global authority cannot be imported from Madison Square or Parliament Square, nor can it be sustained by suppressing the dissent of its citizenry. India’s genuine global stature must be forged internally by resolving its sharpest economic contradictions and steadfastly reinforcing the equitable, inclusive foundation of constitutional morality, equity, and social justice at home.
This domestic resolution is foundational to navigating a rapidly shifting global landscape. Under the current administration, New Delhi riskily allows India to function as a geopolitical trump card for the United States in its Indo-Pacific strategy to contain China. Granted, a deep-seated diplomatic rift has persisted since 1959, when Jawaharlal Nehru granted the Dalai Lama and his followers political asylum. Beijing viewed this humanitarian act as a violation of the Panchsheel non-interference clause and a direct challenge to Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
Yet, it is time to transcend these historical gridlocks. Viewed through a comprehensive Third World perspective—the very lens championed by the Indian School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)—the shared destinies of these two titans become undeniable. Both nations share the historical scars of Western exploitation: India endured centuries of direct decolonization, while China survived the devastating Opium Wars imposed by European empires. Historically, our civilizational ties run deep, bound by a profound cultural nexus epitomized by the journey of the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma to the Shaolin Temple.
Today, India and China collectively constitute nearly half of the world’s population. During the Mao-Nehru era, ordinary citizens joyfully echoed the slogan on the streets: “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” (India and China are brothers). Having observed global geopolitics from within the United States for over forty years, it is my considered opinion that the current alignment is unsustainably lopsided. True strategic autonomy demands that New Delhi and Beijing move past the rivalries of the previous century. By aligning to rebuff contemporary Western dominance, these two civilizational powers can finally pave a path toward genuine multipolarity, ensuring lasting peace, prosperity, and human dignity for half of humanity.
Top - Home