Hindutva Profiles (HP) is a research project that documents individuals and organizations that promote the Hindu nationalist ideology known as Hindutva. The project focuses on prominent proponents of Hindutva in India and the United States, as well as individuals who incite, support, or participate in violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India.

HP compiles and analyzes information from publicly available sources to create factual profiles of individuals, organizations, networks, and activities associated with the Hindutva movement. Our goal is to provide researchers, journalists, policymakers, and the public with accessible, well-documented information about the actors and institutions advancing Hindu nationalist ideology and related forms of religious intolerance.

Hindutva is a political ideology that advocates for transforming democratic India into an ethnoreligious nation known as the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation), where religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, are reduced to second-class citizens.

Hindutva ideology — equated to fascism — is promoted by a hydra-headed group network of militant, vigilante, political, and cultural groups like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary organization headquartered in Nagpur city of India’s Maharashtra state, is at the center of the Sangh and sets the priorities and tactics for promoting the hateful Hindutva ideology nationally and internationally. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the political wing of RSS.

The ideology dates back roughly 100 years. Its early ideologues, especially VD Savarkar and MS Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak (leader) of RSS were admirers of Hitler and Mussolini.

RSS members met Nazi regime officials, Mussolini, and his officers in fascist Italy. They came back to set up a fascist organization in India modelled after Bailila, the youth wing of the fascist movement. RSS is the largest and oldest continuously running fascist organization in the world.

The co-founders and other leaders of the RSS publicly defended Hitler on numerous occasions. They advocated for adopting Hilter’s solution to the “Jewish problem” for Muslims and Christians in India. V.D.Savarkar, one of the co-founders of the Hindu Nationalist movements, defended Hitler, Nazism, and the persecution of Jews in the following words:

“A Nation is formed by the majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being a minority were driven out from Germany” ~ Dec 11, 1938

“Who are we to dictate to Germany, Japan or Russia or Italy to chose a particular form of policy of government simply because we woo it out of academical attraction? Sure Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best. The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those isms were the most congenial tonic their health demanded.”

“Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of governments were imperative and beneficial under the conditions that obtained there” ~ Aug 1, 1938

Since its founding, the RSS has advocated for complete subjugation, enslavement, and/or genocide of Muslims and Christians in India, who – it alleges – subscribe to foreign (non-Indian) religions.

In the words of M.S. Golwalkar, one of the co-founders and head of RSS:

“[The] foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.” ~ M.S.Golwalkar, “We, Or Our Nationhood Defined” –1935, p.35.

The RSS is a paramilitary organization that controls one of the largest militias in the world, with an estimated 6 million members participating in daily training in nearly 100,000 training camps across India.

It was banned thrice by the Indian government for its role in violence. It was banned the first time when a member of the RSS killed Mahatma Gandhi. It was also banned after its members destroyed the historical Babri mosque in India, leading to the deaths of over 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, in the violence that followed.

The RSS, its members, and affiliated organizations have been implicated in countless acts of massacres, ethnic cleansing, bombings, forced conversions, and other forms of violence against religious minorities in India.

RSS leaders openly proclaim “wiping off” Christianity and Islam from India and advocate for denying Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism a separate religious identity, and insist that they are branches of Hinduism.

Parts of the Indian diaspora in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe have played a role in advancing Hindutva ideology and supporting organizations affiliated with the RSS, contributing to the transnational reach of the movement.

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