On August 29, more than 5,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden in New York for the Universal Oneness Celebration. On stage was Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
"I come from a country where there is oneness in diversity," Bhagwat said. "We celebrate it." He added that a Hindu who believes Muslims should not live in Bharat cannot remain a Hindu. According to Scroll.in, a rabbi, an imam and a reverend were seated alongside him.
It was a carefully constructed public image for an organisation that has long been associated with a very different one.
But there is another Bhagwat in the record.
At the World Hindu Congress in Chicago in 2018, he compared Hindus to a lion that could be overwhelmed by wild dogs if it stood alone.
The vocabulary is different. The question is whether the politics are.
That question matters as the RSS marks its centenary. Over the past decade, the organisation and its leadership have changed the way they speak about the Constitution, Muslims, temple disputes and the RSS's place in public life. Its international outreach has also expanded.
Is this an ideological evolution? Or is the organisation changing how it presents itself without fundamentally changing what it stands for?
Why New York matters
Bhagwat's appearance in New York was part of a larger centenary outreach across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The RSS has outlined three broad objectives for this international engagement: presenting what it describes as a factual and positive view of India, Hindu society and the RSS; promoting the idea of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or the world as one family; and opening dialogue with mainstream society on the interests and rights of Hindus and people of Indian origin.
The organisation has also acknowledged that its image abroad is part of the reason for this outreach.
At a May 2026 briefing with foreign journalists in Delhi, RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale said the visits were intended to counter perceptions of the RSS as a paramilitary organisation involved in attacks on minorities, according to EasternEye. The remarks came months after the US Commission on International Religious Freedom had criticised the organisation.
The Sangh's centenary strategy has another revealing phrase: Vimarsh ko badalna hai — to change the discourse.
So there is little ambiguity about whether the RSS wants to influence how it is perceived. The more interesting question is what is different about this effort from its earlier outreach.
From diaspora mobilisation to institutional outreach
The RSS has maintained an overseas network for decades. Research by the Australian academic Felix Pal, cited in a Deccan Herald analysis of the organisation's international rebranding, describes an ecosystem that focused substantially on mobilising the Indian diaspora and generating financial support for programmes and political campaigns in India. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was one important example.
That network expanded to hundreds of affiliated organisations across dozens of countries. Organisations such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh continue to operate outside India.But the audience appears to be widening.
In April 2026, Hosabale travelled through the US, UK and Germany, appearing not only at diaspora gatherings but also at institutions such as Stanford University and the Hudson Institute in Washington. These engagements involved discussions and questions on India, its economy and its place in the world.
That is a different proposition from speaking primarily to an audience already sympathetic to the Sangh. It is an attempt to explain the organisation to people and institutions that may not share its worldview.
The political environment around that outreach matters too.
In January 2025, lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs registered to lobby the US Congress in connection with the RSS. The arrangement was later reported by Prism Reports. The campaign was subsequently terminated, while the RSS denied hiring the firm.
There is no evidence in this record to establish that these developments were connected. But they illustrate the broader problem the Sangh is trying to address: its international image has become a matter of public and political scrutiny.
The centenary gives it a large platform on which to respond.
The RSS has changed its language before
The organisation's history offers an important precedent.
The RSS was banned in February 1948 following Mahatma Gandhi's assassination. The ban was lifted in July 1949 after discussions between the government and RSS leaders.
The government had sought, among other things, a written constitution, an emphasis on cultural rather than political activity, a rejection of violence and secrecy, and an affirmation of loyalty to the Constitution and the national flag. There remains disagreement over whether these were formal conditions for lifting the ban: accounts in The Federal, The Tribune and Hindustan Times describe the constitution as a precondition, while some right-leaning accounts hold that the ban was lifted unconditionally.
MS Golwalkar subsequently submitted a written constitution. It described the Sangh as "aloof from politics" and focused on social and cultural activity.
Yet when Golwalkar was asked whether the RSS had compromised, he rejected the suggestion.
At a press conference in Madras on July 22, 1949, he said: "We have given up nothing that is fundamental to us. People may call it clarification."
Ten days later, in Nagpur, he said: "No compromise has been made. No promise of any kind has been given to the government."
The episode is relevant because it demonstrates something that has recurred in the Sangh's history: institutional accommodation does not necessarily mean that the organisation's leadership sees itself as having changed its fundamentals.
The domestic shift under Bhagwat
The changes associated with Bhagwat did not begin with the New York speech.
Ayodhya provides one of the clearest examples.
In December 2009, in remarks reported by Deccan Herald, Bhagwat said the RSS would continue to support the Ram temple movement. Thirteen years later, in June 2022, speaking at an event reported by The Tribune, he described participation in the temple agitation as an exception — something the Sangh had undertaken "though it was against our nature" — and said it did not want to pursue similar agitations in future.
That is a documented change in how the same organisation's leadership described the same political movement.
Bhagwat's 2018 lectures at Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan offered another significant intervention. He said the RSS had never acted against the Constitution and acknowledged, as Hindustan Times reported at the time, that the words "secular" and "socialist", though added later, were now part of the Constitution. He also said that Hindu Rashtra did not mean there was no place for Muslims and that excluding Muslims would be incompatible with Hindutva.
In 2021, at an event organised by the Muslim Rashtriya Manch in Ghaziabad, Bhagwat criticised those who lynched people in the name of cow protection, saying such acts were contrary to Hindutva and that the law should act without partiality. Reports in Deccan Herald and The Tribune noted that he added, in the same speech, that some false cases had also been registered in the name of lynching.
These statements do not amount to a complete ideological shift. But they do show a deliberate change in the language used by the organisation's most prominent leader.Ram Madhav, a former RSS pracharak and BJP general secretary, described Bhagwat's 2018 intervention as a "glasnost" moment — an opening up. He argued that the change had been developing for years, while cautioning that extending it through the wider organisation would require something akin to a "Perestroika".
That distinction is important.
A change in language at the top can be politically significant. It does not, by itself, prove that an organisation has changed its ideological foundations.
The language around Muslims
Bhagwat's statements on Hindu-Muslim relations show the same complexity.
During the Gyanvapi controversy in June 2022, he questioned the need to look for a Shivling in every mosque and said there was no need to raise a new dispute every day. He also said court decisions should be respected.
But in the same speech, he referred to the history of temples being destroyed during invasions and said there were thousands of such temples.
Both positions matter.
One argues against continually reopening historical disputes. The other retains historical grievances within the narrative.
In September 2022, Bhagwat made a documented visit to a mosque in Delhi and met Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, head of the All India Imams Organisation.
In December 2024, speaking in Pune after the consecration of the Ram temple, he warned against using temple disputes elsewhere as a means of building Hindu leadership.Again, the direction is clear enough to notice, but not simple enough to label.
The reservation question complicates the picture
The record also contains episodes that resist any straightforward narrative of moderation.In 2015, Bhagwat called for a review of the reservation system. The remarks came during the Patidar agitation in Gujarat and were widely linked to political difficulties for the BJP during the Bihar election campaign.
In 2017, RSS publicity chief Manmohan Vaidya made a similar argument at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The RSS subsequently changed its public position on reservation.Some analyses have interpreted that shift as a response to the political consequences of the earlier position and concerns over a wider caste confrontation. That remains an interpretation, rather than an established fact.
There have also been statements from Bhagwat that sit uneasily alongside the more conciliatory language.
In a January 2023 interview with the RSS journals Organiser and Panchjanya, he said Hindu society had been at war for more than a thousand years against what he described as foreign aggression, influence and conspiracy. He said aggression was "but natural" for those at war.
In the same interview, however, he said Muslims living in India had nothing to fear, while asking them to abandon what he called a rhetoric of supremacy.The contradictions are not incidental. They are part of the record.
Ayodhya shows why the story cannot be simplified
The Babri Masjid demolition is perhaps the clearest reminder of why the RSS's evolution cannot be reduced to a story of moderation.
In December 2009, Bhagwat said there was "no question of regret" over the demolition and maintained that the RSS would continue to support the Ram temple movement. He described the demolition as a spontaneous reaction by karsevaks rather than the result of a conspiracy.
The Liberhan Commission reached a different conclusion. After a 17-year inquiry, it described the demolition as a planned and coordinated act and referred to it as a "joint conspiratorial enterprise".
But the criminal case produced a different legal outcome.
On September 30, 2020, a special CBI court acquitted all 32 surviving accused in the criminal conspiracy case, finding insufficient evidence of a conspiracy and accepting the argument that some leaders had attempted to prevent the demolition.
These are different findings in different contexts. A commission of inquiry and a criminal court were not answering precisely the same legal question.
That distinction matters when discussing the historical record — and particularly when making claims about individual responsibility.
Bhagwat himself was not an accused in the Babri demolition case. Documentary filmmaker Lalit Vachani, who filmed inside RSS headquarters in Nagpur in 1992, later wrote in The Wire that Bhagwat, then the organisation's All India Sharirik Pramukh, was in contact with RSS volunteers during that period.
That account may inform our understanding of his position within the organisation at the time. It is not a judicial finding against him.
What does the centenary outreach tell us?
The response to the current international outreach is itself revealing.
More than 5,000 people attended the Madison Square Garden event. Outside the venue, Scroll.in reported, 65 US organisations representing Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jewish, Dalit and civil-rights groups signed a joint statement opposing the outreach. Protests were also organised by groups including Hindus for Human Rights and the Indian American Muslim Council.
The diaspora itself is not politically uniform.
Speaking on The Federal's Capital Beat, journalist Vivek Deshpande argued that the section of the diaspora aligned with the RSS and BJP may be relatively small but is highly organised and resourceful. Its influence, he suggested, can therefore exceed its numerical strength.That may help explain why the Sangh's international outreach is not simply about numbers. It is also about legitimacy, access and the ability to shape how the organisation is understood outside India.
So, has the RSS changed?
There is enough evidence to say that the RSS under Mohan Bhagwat has changed some of its public language and some of the positions expressed by its leadership.
The shift on future temple agitations is significant. So are Bhagwat's repeated statements on Muslims, the Constitution and the need to avoid reopening historical disputes.The international strategy has changed too. The Sangh is increasingly trying to speak not only to its existing supporters but to universities, policy institutions, journalists and wider civil society.
But none of this establishes that the RSS has abandoned its ideological core.
Its supporters see the change as evolution — a broadening of an organisation that has been misunderstood. Its critics see it as rebranding: a change in presentation designed to make the organisation more acceptable without fundamentally altering its politics.Both interpretations have evidence behind them.
Perhaps the most useful conclusion, therefore, is also the simplest: the RSS has changed, but the extent of that change remains contested.
An organisation can change its vocabulary relatively quickly. A deeper ideological transformation takes longer to establish.
The RSS has now spent a century adapting to India's changing political landscape. The centenary speeches tell us how it wants to be seen today.
What happens after the centenary will tell us much more about what it has actually become.Because changing how an organisation speaks is one thing.
Changing what it stands for is another.
(In Makes Sense, Sajesh Mohan explores the politics, ideas and cultural forces that shape the stories and conversations around us — from public affairs to popular culture.)