On 25 August, RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat landed in New York City. Later that week, he was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at a Madison Square Garden event marketed as ‘Universal Oneness Celebrations’. Not many bought that pitch.

On 20 August, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) sought sanctions against the RSS and urged the US administration to deny its leaders diplomatic courtesies or high-level meetings. The timing of its call was no coincidence.

Addressing the media in Delhi, a spokesperson for the Indian ministry of external affairs dismissed the USCIRF as ‘a biased institution’. “We should ignore such institutions as they have their own agendas and lack credibility.”

The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal agency that monitors religious freedom globally. It makes policy recommendations to the US president, secretary of state and the US Congress.

In its annual report published in March, the USCIRF recommended to the US government that it ‘impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities, such as India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW, the country’s external espionage agency) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for their responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom by freezing those individuals’ or entities’ assets and/or barring their entry into the United States.’

The reference to R&AW stemmed from the alleged involvement of one of its employees, Vikas Yadav, in a failed assassination attempt in New York on Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an anti-India Sikh extremist.

The report also recommended to the Trump administration that it ‘designate India as a ‘country of particular concern’ for engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and........

© National Herald