RSS Chief’s Dussehra Delusions: Foreign conspiracies without evidence, foreign funds without scrutiny

Mohan Bhagwat has conflated a number of contemporary examples of protest to create a scary picture of political anarchy worldwide waiting to overwhelm India. In truth they are all different

Bharat Bhushan

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Chief Mohan Bhagwat, alleged that “demonic forces” from the West were trying to “destabilise India” in his annual Dussehra speech to the organisation. He also claimed that “regime change will not happen” in India like in France (sic), Albania, Bangladesh, or Nepal.

Like the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, Bhagwat offered neither evidence of foreign interference nor of a conspiracy to force regime change.

On the other hand, there is no dearth of evidence of both RSS-affiliated organisations and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi receiving support from foreign donors. The latest evidence comes from a US publication, Bellingcat. It shows that US donor-advised funds channelled millions of dollars in grants to RSS-affiliated NGOs in India. Donor-advised funds are a US charity-giving arrangement — individuals contribute money or assets to a charity they want to sponsor through these funds, receive a tax-deduction, and can remain anonymous.

The investigation by Bellingcat, published on October 6, shows that two US-based charities, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA (Ekal USA), and Sewa International (Sewa USA), received $24.4 million from organisations managing donor-advised funds between 2020 and 2024. Together they received contributions and grants of $117.8 million. The ultimate donors remain anonymous, and are not part of the public records.

Both Ekal USA and Sewa USA have close links with the RSS. Ekal USA began as a programme of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. In India, Ekal Vidyalaya schools have been criticised for indoctrinating poor children with Hindutva ideology. The Sewa USA website also points to its RSS connections and describes Seva Bharathi in India, an RSS-sponsored group, as its sister organisation.

The investigation found that both were funding sister organisations, also affiliated to the RSS in India. The Ekal Vidyalaya project — an RSS affiliate — received $33.7 million in foreign grants from Ekal USA. Similarly, Sewa USA reported giving foreign grants to India and South Asia amounting to $29.7 million. It is not known how much was given to its sister organisation in India, Seva Bharathi, during this period (2020-2024).

Both Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India and Seva Bharathi have FCRA clearance from an RSS-friendly Modi government. Logically, however, merely on the basis of these organisations receiving foreign funding, can it be said that either they or their parent organisation, the RSS, have automatically become agents of foreign powers?

How is it then that the RSS readily accuses those who challenge the Modi government as operating under foreign influence (having not even provided evidence of foreign funding), while financial and ideological networks located abroad who fund its associates in India are considered beyond suspicion.

The same standard should be applied equally to both those who are critical of the government and those ideologically aligned to it. It should include full disclosure of funding, transparency about the organisational relationships with the funding agencies abroad, disclosure of the purpose of the expenditure, and production of evidence of any improper influence.

As for the Modi government, rallies abroad, at Madison Square Garden in New York, Wembley Stadium in London, or ‘Howdy, Modi!’ in Houston — are foreign-funded events and a form of transnational political interference because of how they impact domestic politics in India. Through these events foreign citizens, albeit of Indian origin (PIOs), pool millions of dollars that indirectly influence Indian elections and domestic political atmosphere through image boosting campaigns for Modi.

These events also interfere in the domestic politics of the host country such as in Modi’s partisan sloganeering for local political leaders as in ‘Abki baar, Trump Sarkar’. The events also turn Indian community organisations in the host country into a lobby, to press Western political leaders as in pressing them to overlook human rights or democratic backsliding within India.

So, neither Bhagwat nor the Modi government have a leg to stand on when they talk of foreign forces interfering in Indian domestic politics.

Bhagwat’s second proposition in his Dussehra speech was that it is a “wrong perception that problems get solved only through agitation”.

Of course, problems also get resolved through dialogue, negotiation, and parliamentary debate. However, when people feel that these methods have failed repeatedly to make those in power listen — as in the case of voter exclusion through SIR — are citizens not free to force negotiation with the State through peaceful resistance in the indigenous manner blessed by Mahatma Gandhi?

Bhagwat’s statement that “regime change won’t happen in India” is wishful and inaccurate. Sudden upheavals may be harder in India because of its size and established institutions, but they are not impossible. India’s history is replete with examples where mass agitations forced the removal of chief ministers (Chimanbhai Patel’s ouster in 1974), contributed to the electoral defeat of governments (the J P Movement in 1974-1975), made governments reverse policy (farmers’ movement in 2020-2021) and altered the balance of power in Parliament (fall of the Morarji Desai government in 1979 after the disintegration of the Janata Dal).

The fall of a government does not mean a collapse of the political system. Hypothetically, the Modi government could fall if the National Democratic Alliance coalition breaks down, or if a mass movement leads to an early general election.

Bhagwat has conflated a number of contemporary examples of protest to create a scary picture of political anarchy worldwide waiting to overwhelm India. In truth they are all different. The French government of Michel Bernier fell in 2024 after losing a vote of confidence — through a constitutional parliamentary process without an overthrow of the French State. The current protests in France by students and labour unions has not led to the fall of the French government either. The ongoing protests in 2026 in Albania demonstrate the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama is under pressure, but it has not yet fallen.

Bangladesh and Nepal demonstrate a quite different pathway where political channels had become ineffective or inaccessible and the State’s political institutions lost their capacity to negotiate with the mass movement. It is reasonable to think that based on India’s size, its federal structure, its strong institutions, and military traditions that will not be the trajectory of Indian politics today.

With the long tradition and maturity of mass movements in India, the government and the RSS chief ought to take a lesson from that history instead of branding the demand for rethinking current policy changes in the electoral system as a foreign conspiracy.

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/rss-chiefs-dussehra-delusions-foreign-conspiracies-without-evidence-foreign-funds-without-scrutiny-4192308

+++++++++++++

India’s self-incubated East India Company

Rahul Gandhi defamation case: Savarkar’s grandson admits Nathuram, Gopal Godse were active RSS members

Gandhi’s Assassin. By Dhirendra K Jha

Extra-legal status of the RSS/BJP. Abhay Dubey & Vinod Sharma discuss the Ram Mandir scandal

Unsolicited thoughts from an elder citizen

Domination and Chaos: India’s radical conservatism

The RSS Does Not Exist – on paper

V.D. Savarkar and Gandhi’s murder

Delhi Police Archive on RSS activity in October-December 1947

The Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS