A few months back, Rutgers’ Centre for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR) put out a report and a roadshow around a familiar thesis that is “Hindutva in America”. It framed Hindutva as a far-right project, treated diaspora groups as RSS fronts, and claimed that Hindutva is a menace to American pluralism.
1/n 🚨On October 27th, @RutgersU will platform open Hindu hate on college campus.
— CoHNA (Coalition of Hindus of North America) (@CoHNAOfficial) October 4, 2025
This is not an academic exercise. It’s blatant bigotry that calls for a federal investigation against American Hindu organizations and accuses them of being foreign agents.
It will paint a… pic.twitter.com/UsVR3EA1u9
On 17th June, a launch video was published on CSRR’s YouTube channel and now they are hosting a panel discussion revolving around the report on 27th October with Sahar Aziz, Professor of Law at Rutgers, and two speakers, doctoral student Nikaytaa Malhotra and anti-Hindu “historian” Audrey Truschke, who is famous for twisting facts about Hinduism. Not to forget, Truschke is so deep in hate for Hindus that she openly abused Bhagwan Ram in her writings on social media. The message with such a panel is clear enough. They want to rebrand mainstream Hindu advocacy as a security problem without providing any concrete evidence to support their narrative on merits.
What the report is and what it prescribes
The document claims Hindu organisations rode the post-9/11 Islamophobia wave to gain acceptance for an “ethnonationalist” agenda. According to the report, in the United States, the movement does two things that paint Muslims as suspicious and shut down academic freedom.
From that, it draws five prescriptions that are anything but modest. It calls on officials and civic bodies to sever ties with Hindu groups it dislikes; for federal authorities to force FARA registration on any outfit it deems an RSS “proxy”; for charities associated in any way with Hindu nationalism to publish exhaustive foreign-link disclosures; for Washington to sanction or deny visas to individuals accused of aiding anti-minority violence in India; and for universities to be trained up on “Hindutva-inspired” discrimination and shield professors and students accordingly. If the cure sounds like a blacklist in search of a disease, that’s because it largely is.
In this report, we are mainly concentrating on the discussion posed during the introductory video published in June this year and later will discuss the published paper itself.
The framing problem
The discussion collapsed the moment they put “Hindu”, “Hindutva”, “RSS” and “BJP” into one undifferentiated bogeyman. They claimed that whatever is linked to Hinduism, including Hindutva, RSS and BJP, and even anyone who is Hindu, is part of para-political outgrowths of Nagpur, where RSS’s headquarters are located.
RSS, VHP and their offshoot organisations, in India and abroad, are community civic bodies. These are similar to diaspora organisations that are formed by other communities worldwide. However, when it comes to Hindu organisations, they conveniently labelled them as promoters of caste policies, hate crimes against non-Hindu communities and more. The troubling part is, they were not analysis, but bundling. By equating Hindu organisations and their ideology with that of Western concepts of “far right”, “fascist”, “white nationalist” and “Christian Zionist”, speaker Deepa Sundaram diluted the thick line that differentiates the Indian “right wing” from the Western one.
Misinformation about Savarkar and the RSS
One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion was that, in the beginning itself, Sundaram made a major blunder. She called Veer Savarkar the founder of RSS. Savarkar was not the founder of RSS and the organisation was founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925. If they want to build a grand theory on the genealogy of an organisation, it is essential to at least get the genealogy right.
The “anti-Hindu org” trope (HAF and CoHNA)
Then came the ritual smear of Hindu organisations operating in the US, namely the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA). Sundaram basically called them sinister fronts of Hindutva. In the real world, HAF and CoHNA are registered, public-facing advocacy and civil-rights outfits that track anti-Hindu hate, brief lawmakers, support temple safety and speak for the Hindu community that, newsflash, is a minority community in the US.
So-called academics like Sundaram and Truschke have ideological differences with HAF and CoHNA and it is understandable, especially in the case of the latter, who is a fan of Aurangzeb. However, that does not give them the right to turn the disagreement into defamation and paint genuine Hindu organisations as some sinister plan of Hindus living in India.
The Islamophobia catch-all
During the discussion, the narrative of “Islamophobia” popped up several times accusing Hindus, both in India and the US, of hating Muslims. Why? Because Hindu groups often criticise radical Islam, Pakistan-linked terror groups, or diaspora intimidation. There have been several instances where Hindus became an open target of Islamists, be it Love Jihad, terrorism and more. The most recent example is of the Pahalgam terrorist attack where 26 innocent Hindus were killed after confirming their religious identity by Pakistan-sponsored Islamic terrorists.
Laundering Khalistanis as victims
This brings us to the next trick in the grand show, that is, recasting Khalistani terrorists as harmless “activists” crushed by “transnational repression”. Take Hardeep Singh Nijjar, for example. Ottawa accused New Delhi of murdering a Canadian, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on Canadian soil in 2023. New Delhi categorically denied the accusation. The diplomatic turmoil was not the only problem here. The problem is, Ottawa accused New Delhi of killing a Khalistani terrorist without any concrete evidence. Not to forget, Ottawa is yet to provide any workable evidence to Indian agencies.
Nijjar was a Khalistani terrorist who fled India using a fake Hindu name in the 1990s. He tried to take refuge in Canada but his application was rejected. He then married a Canadian woman and tried to take citizenship via the spouse route, which was again rejected. For decades, he kept living in Canada trying to get citizenship one way or another. Meanwhile, India repeatedly requested the extradition of Nijjar, but Canada refused it. It was only after Nijjar’s murder that it came to light that Canada had granted him citizenship.
Nijjar was not a saint. He was a pro-Khalistani terrorist deeply involved in Khalistani activities abroad. He had visited Pakistan and met Khalistani terrorists there. Furthermore, he was seen carrying weapons and was running an arms training camp in Canada. All these facts do not paint him as a model citizen.
Another name mentioned by speaker Jot Singh during the discussion was that of Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, founder of Sikhs For Justice, a designated Khalistani terrorist outfit operating from the United States. SFJ was banned by the Indian government in 2019 and Pannun was designated an individual terrorist in 2020.
Pannun, again, is not a harmless activist voicing demands for a separate Sikh homeland. He has a history of instigating Sikhs in India and abroad against the Indian government. His group’s followers have burnt Indian flags, raised anti-India slogans, and openly threatened to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of External Affairs Dr S. Jaishankar and top Indian diplomats in Canada and the US.
Pannun has repeatedly announced cash rewards for defacing government buildings in India, stopping PM Modi from hoisting the flag on 15th August, released maps of the so-called Khalistan and run “referendums” for Khalistan in multiple countries. Despite India’s objections and requests to Canada and other countries to curb his activities, Pannun has continued to pose as an activist and run anti-India campaigns.
Painting Pannun and Nijjar as activists not only raises serious questions about the genuineness of the speakers but also raises concerns about the anti-India narrative being built on the sidelines of bashing Hindutva.
What “Hindutva fascism” misses about the diaspora
There’s also a wilful flattening of the American Hindu landscape. You’ll hear that Hindu groups are stitched into white nationalism and “Christian Zionism” because someone from India spoke at a conservative conference and an American senator mentioned his Bible ten minutes later. That’s not analysis; that’s an anecdote in search of a thesis. Out in the real world, Hindu organisations run interfaith programmes, submit to the same charity audits as everyone else, and get on with the boring graft of minority civic life, that is, hate-crime tracking, school-district literacy, Diwali safety briefings and temple vandalism response.
So, is “Hinduphobia” made up?
Only if you close your eyes. Hindus in the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Ireland, Australia and the UK have reported record hate incidents in recent cycles, precisely as the political temperature rose, while HAF and others have had to badger authorities for years just to acknowledge anti-Hindu bias in official language. Pretending “Hinduphobia” doesn’t exist because you dislike who uses the term is a comfort blanket, not an argument. To learn about Hinduphobia, please visit Hinduphobia Tracker.
The academic-activist pipeline
There’s also the small matter that many of the groups propping up this “Hindutva in America” framing are overtly activist. For example, HfHR publishes blogs calling HAF a far-right conduit one week and then presents itself as a neutral arbiter the next. One of the speakers in the discussion, Pranay Somayajula, worked at Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) till July this year.
It’s perfectly fine to be an activist. Just don’t cosplay as a disinterested referee while asking the state to blacklist your opponents. If your aim is genuinely “pluralism”, telling universities, police and politicians to cut off Hindu advocacy groups en bloc is an odd way to show it.
Organisations behind and supporting the anti-Hindu report
IAMC
One of the speakers during the discussion who cried “Islamophobia” the most, was Safa Ahmed, associate director of media and communications, IAMC.
According to the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), the Indian American Muslim Council has links with the banned Islamic terror outfit Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Besides, the Indian American Muslim Council has ties with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) through its founder Shaik Ubaid. The IAMC is a Jamaat-e-Islami-backed lobbyist organisation claiming to be a rights advocacy group.
In the past, it reportedly collaborated with and even paid money to various groups in the USA to get India blacklisted by the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom). IAMC has been caught spreading fake news and misinformation to further the Islamist cause in India. It was also charged under the UAPA in 2021.
HfHR
For someone unfamiliar with the organisation Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR), the name might suggest it is a Hindu organisation working for the welfare of the Hindu community. In reality, it is no less than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The organisation has been at the forefront of pushing anti-Hindu narratives in the US and UK. It has consistently positioned itself as a defender of human rights while pursuing a darker agenda. The organisation is funded by the likes of the Tides Foundation, an entity linked to funding pro-Hamas rallies on US university campuses. HfHR’s advocacy efforts often align with those of separatist and extremist groups hostile to Hindu interests.
Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR) which is an open anti-Hindu and anti-India organisation based out of the US. The organisation presents itself as a defender of human rights. However, its blatant anti-Hindu narrative has been exposed several times. HfHR often uses Hindu symbols and teachings to push its narrative. HfHR does not take a breath before criticising Hindu practices and beliefs. Their selective outrage and twisted interpretations of Hindu text, as she did here, suggest that their primary goal is not to protect human rights but to erode Hindu identity from the face of the earth by smearing it with false narratives.
HfHR was formed in the year 2019 by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) and the Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI). Interestingly, the three organisations had formed another outfit called the Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA). As per an article in The Hindu, the Alliance for Justice and Accountability had been at the forefront of leading demonstrations against the visit of PM Modi to Houston on September 22, 2019. Sunita Vishwanath, the co-founder of ‘Hindus for Human Rights’ had also tried to create hysteria and panic among Indian Muslims about the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2019.
In 2021, ‘Hindus for Human Rights’ also endorsed the anti-Hindu event ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ conference. It also came up with a “special toolkit” to propagate against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his State visit to the US in June 2023.
In June 2023, Congress scion Rahul Gandhi was seen sitting alongside Sunita Vishwanath during an event hosted by the Hudson Institute. In October 2023, the X account of HfHR was withheld in India in response to a legal demand.
Conclusion
The baseline here is straightforward. The report’s framing of Hindutva as far-right fascism, diaspora groups as “RSS fronts”, and Hindu advocacy as inherently anti-Muslim relies on selective quotations, factual slips and an allergy to nuance.
RSS is not the evil here. It is one of the organisations that have stood with the people of India, irrespective of their caste, religion or race, during calamities, natural or otherwise. RSS, VHP and their sister organisations have rushed to help the needy no matter the situation. Whether it be floods, pandemics, earthquakes or even wars, Hindus from these organisations have extended their hands to everyone out there.
The evil here lies with the organisations and individuals that are pushing the anti-Hindu narrative while hiding behind “academia”. The likes of Audrey Truschke, Jot Singh, Deepa Sundaram and Pranay Somayajula have created a hateful environment for Hindus worldwide, which needs to be countered immediately.
