‘I don’t support the rally’: Mamdani opposes RSS chief’s NYC event

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he opposes a planned Madison Square Garden event featuring Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, as civil rights and interfaith groups urge the city to cancel the gathering.

Bhagwat is scheduled to address around 5,000 members of the Indian diaspora at Madison Square Garden on August 29 as part of the RSS’s centenary-year global outreach programme.

“I don’t support the rally, but I don’t know if the city has any jurisdiction on cancelling a private event,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Mamdani, the first Indian-American mayor in New York City’s history, said his opposition was rooted in his belief in a pluralistic and secular India.

“The vision of India that I was taught by my family … was that of a pluralistic society, of a secular republic that believed in the belonging of each and every person who was from India,” he said.

He added that he found it “incredibly troubling” to see the rise of a movement based on what he described as an exclusionary vision of the country.

Mamdani’s remarks came as interfaith and civil rights organisations gathered outside New York City Hall to protest Bhagwat’s appearance and call for the event to be cancelled.

According to The Hindu, the groups included Hindus for Human Rights, Indian American Muslim Council and the Interfaith Centre of New York. They have argued that the event would provide a prominent platform to an organisation they accuse of promoting religious exclusion.

The protests were also backed by a broader coalition of human rights and community organisations and several local officials. Activists have urged Mamdani not only to oppose the Madison Square Garden event but also to condemn what they describe as the RSS’s growing influence among the Indian diaspora in the United States.

“Mohan Bhagwat does not represent Hindus. He leads an extremist Hindu nationalist movement that has fueled violence, exclusion and fear for minority communities,” Sravya Tadepalli, deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, said ahead of Tuesday’s demonstration.

The RSS, founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, is widely regarded as the ideological fountainhead of India’s Hindu nationalist movement, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is commonly described as its political arm.

The organisation has long sought to build support among the Indian diaspora. Edward Anderson, a scholar of Hindu nationalism and the Indian diaspora, told Middle East Eye that holding the event at Madison Square Garden could help the RSS project an image of strength and influence and generate publicity that can be circulated in India.

The venue also carries political significance for India’s ruling establishment. Modi addressed a crowd of around 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden in 2014, shortly after becoming prime minister.

Anderson said Bhagwat’s appearance could form part of a wider effort to strengthen the RSS’s legitimacy and influence and counter criticism portraying it as a paramilitary and anti-minority organisation.

Mamdani has previously criticised Hindu nationalism. In 2024, while serving as a New York state assembly member, he supported efforts to remove a Hindu nationalist float from the city’s India Day parade.

The planned August 29 event is being organised by AHEAD Forum under the name “Universal Oneness Celebration”. Organisers say the gathering will promote the message that “the world is one family” and encourage people to look beyond religious and other divisions.

Bhagwat is currently visiting the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom as part of the RSS’s centenary-year global outreach programme.