Thread by @FriedrichPieter

The Hindu nationalist #RSS paramilitary is quite literally Nazi-inspired. @USAmbKeshap's inexplicable whitewashing of RSS demands a rapid & relentless interrogation of the @JoeBiden administration & its intentions towards the persecuted peoples of India.

pieterjfriedrich.medium.com/biden-administ…

“We won’t ignore what our intelligence agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to our homeland today: White supremacy is terrorism,” declared Biden in April.

@USAmbKeshap's meeting, however, suggests that the Biden administration is ignoring American intelligence agencies — as well as US State Department entities — when it comes to the RSS.

As far back as the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was describing the RSS as a “militant” and expressing concerns about its “strength.” According to declassified CIA documents, the paramilitary’s two most important principles were “being anti-Muslim and anti-West.”

In 1998, the CIA described the RSS as the (now ruling) Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) “chauvinist parent organization,” explained that it was first banned in 1948 “after one of its members assassinated Mahatma Gandhi,” and reported:

“The RSS depends on the BJP to keep Hindu nationalism in the public eye as a political issue, and the BJP relies on the RSS for manpower and organizing grassroots electoral support.”

In 2018, the CIA labeled two subsidiaries of the RSS — its religious wing, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the VHP’s youth wing, the Bajrang Dal — as “militant religious organizations.”

For over two decades, human rights reports from the US State Department have frequently called the RSS a “hard-line” group or a “Hindu extremist organization,” typically in connection with allegations of RSS involvement in violence against religious minorities.

Furthermore, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent State Department entity, has incessantly highlighted the influence of the RSS and the “Sangh Parivar” (Family of Organizations) which spring from it.

Noting a “marked increase in violent attacks against members of religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, throughout India, including killings, torture, rape, and destruction of property” in the 1990s, USCIRF explained, “The increase in such violence in India....

.... coincided with the rise in political influence of groups associated with the Sangh Parivar, a collection of organizations that view non-Hindus as foreign to India and aggressively press for governmental policies to promote a Hindu nationalist agenda.”

In 2015, USCIRF reported that, following the election of BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi (an RSS member who is himself accused of orchestrating an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002), “religious minority communities” were subjected to....

.... “numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups, such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).”

In 2016, the group reported that the RSS had recently “placed signs in train stations throughout India that said Christians had to leave India or convert to Hinduism or they will be killed by 2021.”

In 2017, the group further reported that the RSS and its affiliates had “perpetrated numerous incidents of intimidation, harassment, and violence against religious minority communities and Hindu Dalits.”

In 2019, the group attributed the deterioration of “conditions for religious minorities” to “a multifaceted campaign by Hindu nationalist groups” like the RSS “to alienate non-Hindus or lower-caste Hindus,” concluding that it was....

.... “a significant contributor to the rise of religious violence and persecution.”