The council and the World Sikh Organization of Canada are trying to draw attention to what academics, including some in Canada, say they have witnessed for years: an increasing influence and threat from a movement closely linked to the government in New Delhi that they say promotes discrimination against minority religious groups at home and abroad
Canada should not allow a movement out of India that “disseminates hate” and victimizes religious minority groups to entrench itself in this country, according to a report released on March 1 by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the World Sikh Organization of Canada.
The report, called the ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Network in Canada’, details the roots of the RSS movement in India and its extensive global reach, promoting far right views in various ways. “It’s one of the most influential organizations in the world,” said Steven Zhou, a spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims, reported CBC News.
The council and the World Sikh Organization of Canada are trying to draw attention to what academics, including some in Canada, say they have witnessed for years: an increasing influence and threat from a movement closely linked to the government in New Delhi that they say promotes discrimination against minority religious groups at home and abroad.
“(The RSS) poses a major challenge to Canadian commitments to human rights, to tolerance and multiculturalism,” Zhou was quoted saying to CBC News. According to the report, the RSS is at the core of a network of groups “seeking to remake India into a country run by and for Hindus first at the expense of the country’s dizzying slew of minority groups.”
“It’s … vital to keep in mind that the ideal nationalism projected by the RSS network victimizes not just ethno-religious minorities like Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, but also members of India’s lower caste Hindus.”
“It has domestic and international organs that seize political power, perpetuate its supremacist ideologies and actively participate in communal violence,” the report said.
On its website, the organization quotes its founder, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, saying it is “the duty of every Hindu to do his best to consolidate the Hindu society” and that its mission is to strive for “national reconstruction”.
The report on RSS highlights how the movement is operating in Canada, including through political lobbying and through seemingly benign cultural organizations that have charitable status
On the Canadian website, it says it is a “voluntary, non-profit, social and cultural organization” and “aims to organize the Hindu community in order to preserve, practise and promote Hindu ideals and values”.
In December 2021, Sanjay Ruparelia, an Associate Professor of politics and Jarislowsky Democracy Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University, organized a talk by prominent Indian politics researcher Christophe Jaffrelot hosted by the Toronto Public Library.
Ruparelia said he received hundreds of emails from individuals urging organizers to call it off and for the library to ban the event because it was “anti-Hindu”. Academics say this kind of action can be attributed to those who support the views of the RSS. “It’s an attempt to silence them, to undermine their legitimacy,” Ruparelia said, pointing out anyone engaging in debate about the Indian government or its views is automatically labelled by these supporters as “anti-Hindu” or “Hinduphobic”. Ruparelia said he knows of many academics who have been harassed and intimidated online by these people based on articles they’re writing and events they’re organizing.
The report on RSS highlights how the movement is operating in Canada, including through political lobbying and through seemingly benign cultural organizations that have charitable status.
Through the report, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the World Sikh Organization of Canada are urging the federal government to “carefully study and track the growth of a movement that disseminates hate here in Canada”.
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