India Study Centre (ISC) at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) organized a webinar titled, “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh: A Move towards Fascism in South Asia” on January 13, 2021. The webinar was aimed at analyzing the Indian democracy from secularism to RSS and was pondering over the threat emanating to the region by the RSS ideology.
While moderating the event, Dr Saif ur Rehman Malik, Director ISC, welcomed the panellists and maintained that the world is witnessing an unprecedented surge of far-right extremism. Movements like White supremacist, anti-immigration and Islamophobia are prevalent from Europe to Asia. In 2014, with the rise of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Modi, India too fell to populism. Since then, the South Asian region witnesses growing Indian belligerence towards its own people as well as the regional states. Director ISC further reiterated that BJP is a political wing of RSS which is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist organization that was founded to unite Hindus and promote Hindu superiority. The RSS is a staunch follower of the Hindutva ideology that embraces only those religious communities whose origins could be traced to the Indian soil. Hence, it is no surprise that the Muslims and Christians have been suffering at the hands of Hindu extremists particularly, since 2014.
