Photo: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteers at the group’s centenary event, Reshimbagh Ground, Nagpur, Oct. 2, 2025. IDREES MOHAMMED/AFP via Getty Images
Often described as the world’s largest right-wing organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a male-only, Hindu nationalist movement based in India. Critics contend the RSS seeks to roll back the founding leaders’ commitment to a secular, multi-faith India. Members and associated groups have repeatedly been accused of fomenting or taking part in violence against Muslim and Christian communities, and a former RSS member famously assassinated Mohandas Gandhi in 1948.
Opponents of the RSS say Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government borrows elements of the group’s ideology and has pursued policies hostile to Muslims in particular. Leaders of the RSS seldom grant interviews to Western media, so it was notable when a lobbyist for the organization arranged for NPR to speak with one of its senior figures.
Dattatreya Hosabale, who serves as the RSS’s general secretary and is widely seen as the movement’s number two, was in Washington, D.C., this week to give a talk at the conservative Hudson Institute. NPR correspondent Rob Schmitz sat down with Hosabale to ask why he chose to come to the U.S. capital and why he agreed to meet with the press despite the group’s usual media reticence.
Listen to the full interview on NPR to hear Hosabale’s responses and the broader conversation about the RSS’s aims, its role in Indian politics, and how its leaders present themselves abroad.