Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteers take part in the Hindu nationalist organization’s centenary celebrations at Reshimbagh Ground in Nagpur on October 2, 2025. IDREES MOHAMMED/AFP via Getty Images
The largest right-wing group in the world is in India.
That group is an all-male, Hindu nationalist organization called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, better known by its acronym, the RSS.
Its goal is to undo the founding fathers’ vision of India as a secular country, home to people with many faiths.
Some of its members and those of affiliated organizations have been implicated in, or accused of, instigating attacks against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities. Famously, a former RSS member assassinated Mohandas Gandhi in 1948.
Critics say Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is hostile to Muslims in particular and borrows from the organization’s Hindu nationalist ideology.
Leaders of the movement rarely speak to the Western press, so it was surprising when a lobbyist representing one of those leaders asked NPR to set up an interview.
Dattatreya Hosabale, the RSS’s General Secretary and effectively the organization’s second-in-command, was in Washington, D.C., this week for a talk at the conservative Hudson Institute.
NPR’s Rob Schmitz spoke with Hosabale to learn why he was in the nation’s capital and why he agreed to speak with the press.
Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue play button above.