When the India Foundation invited me to participate in a weekend conference with a group of Hindu nationalist intellectuals and political figures aligned with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organization, I accepted immediately. As I wrote in these pages in March, Americans need to engage more deeply with a movement that is reshaping the politics and culture of one of the most important countries in the world.
The RSS, the leading Hindu nationalist organization, is the most important—and most controversial—civil-society movement in modern India. Seen as the source of the Hindu nationalist ideology behind the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the RSS and the group of affiliated and allied organizations and individuals known as the Sangh Parivar have nurtured a distinctive approach to politics and policy that allowed them to replace the center-left, secularist Indian National Congress as the most powerful force in Indian life.