In Canada, now is the time to ban the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh network

Last month, the government of Canada made the unprecedented move of expelling six diplomats linked to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for links to criminal activities on Canadian soil, including extortion, coercion and even murder. India quickly denied such ties and responded by ordering six Canadian diplomats home, including the acting High Commissioner.

The decision to expel the six diplomats from Canada came a year after national headlines were made by the murder of prominent leader of British Columbia’s Sikh community, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, for which Prime Minister Trudeau himself was ultimately assassinated. accusatory the BJP of unlawful involvement.

What many may not know is that the BJP, which has dominated Indian politics for a decade, is the political arm of a much older, perhaps even more consequential, parent organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)a paramilitary group founded in 1925 that has consistently called for the persecution of India’s religious minorities, including Sikhs, Christians, Dalits, Muslims and others. Early RSS ideologues quoted European fascists such as Adolf Hitler as a positive model. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself is a lifelong RSS member, as are many BJP officials.

Like the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University notes that “the RSS has been at the forefront of promoting Hindu nationalism in India” and is accused of inciting “violence against India’s Dalit-Bahujan community, including hate crimes against Muslims, lynchings of Dalits and pogroms against religious minorities.”

Although the current RSS has tried to distance itself from its past activities, there is overwhelming evidence that this is not the case. Under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, an organization only needs to commit terrorism somewhere in the world to become a banned entity. The RSS and its broad network have built a productive resume in this sense.

For example, in February 2020, around forty Muslims were murdered by Islamophobic gangs in the city of New Delhi. They were peacefully protesting against the BJP government’s new immigration laws. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “Top leaders of the BJP dangerously mocked the protesters, and some openly called for violence against them.” Other RSS members too attached with Indian journalists say they deliberately participated in the violence.

Another example concerns the infamous case of Monu Manesar, a member of the youth wing of the prominent RSS affiliate Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal, which is infamous for its livestreaming himself attacking Indian Muslims. That was him arrested last fall as the prime suspect in the murder of two Muslim men and for inciting violence against Muslims in Haryana last summer.

A prominent example of communal violence involving BJP functionaries is Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh since 2017. He started his RSS activism at university by joining the youth wing before rising through the ranks of the BJP. As documented by Amnesty International, Adityanath is infamous for (among other things) deploy bulldozers against Muslim activists who disagree with the BJP’s often sectarian governance. This has earned him the nickname ‘Bulldozer Baba’. Just this month, India’s Supreme Court finally banned the use of bulldozers as a punitive measure.

Other examples include BJP lawmaker Haribhushan Thakur Bachaul, who is running in 2022 called openly that Indian Muslims would be set on fire, comparing them to ‘demons’. Or BJP MP and former cabinet minister Anurag Thakur, who was too censored during an election campaign of the Indian Election Commission stirring up a crowd with chants of “What should be done with the traitors of the country?” – to which the crowd responded: “Shoot them!” The chants referred to those opposing the BJP’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act widely criticized for singling out India’s Muslim refugees as the only group left out of a faster path to citizenship.

Moreover, the RSS and the VHP were explicitly mentioned in another damning HRW report because they are the groups “most directly responsible” in the infamous 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the state of Gujarat. The violence is among the most infamous in modern Indian history and ended in the deaths of more than a thousand Muslims.

In 1992 also VHP members took part into large violent mobs that destroyed the 16^e century Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The incident sparked massive anti-Muslim violence across northern India, resulting in the deaths of around 1,000 people. according to HRW. The incident received wide coverage in the international press, including the BBC, which refers to the RSS as the “ideological source” for groups involved in the Babri incident.

The VHP, also known as the World Hindu Council, works with other RSS affiliated groupsoperates in Canada as well as being based in Ontario registered (and therefore tax-exempt) charities. It’s one open an affiliated branch of the larger global RSS network. Unfortunately, the VHP is not the only sign that this disturbing ideology and network has long been active across Canada.

The RSS’s main foreign group, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), has done so chapters across Canadafrom British Columbia to Nova Scotia. They have also been one since 1991 registered charity in Canada.

In November 2022, the first year of Hindu Heritage Month in Canada, a crowd led by MP Chandra Arya increased the RSS saffron flag on Parliament Hill. In 2020 the Peel District School Board DELETED one of the chairs for posting an Islamophobic tweet. It turns out that the person, who was also fired by his civilian employer, was affiliated with the HSS in Canada.

It is imperative that this Islamophobia, which stems from an imported supremacist ideology, is not allowed to continue to grow and spread in Canada. Our elected officials must recognize this problem and consult with the affected communities, whether they are Muslim, Sikh or Hindu. They should not contribute to the problem.

Indeed, it is important to recognize that while the RSS network claims to represent all Hindus in India and abroad, it is an ideological and political group with a specific vision that cannot and should not be lumped in with all Hinduism or Hindus, representing a large section of Hindus. tradition with millennia of history and diversity.

In the end, and if allowed to fester and grow, Canada risks becoming the scene of more episodes of intercommunal strife against groups deemed unacceptable or dangerous by the RSS, the BJP and their various affiliates.

This shouldn’t happen. It is time to designate the RSS network, which has deep roots here, as a terrorist organization under Canadian law and ban the organization in Canada.