Asif Mahmood
Indian secularism is gone. Its cremation took place at the Red Fort on August 15. Narendra Modi stood there, marking Independence Day, and for the first time in twelve years he praised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. That was not a slip. It was the open declaration of a Hindu state.
The RSS is not an NGO. It is not a cultural club. It is an organization built on hate. Its ideology shaped Nathuram Godse, the man who killed Gandhi. Its men have been linked to pogroms and bombings for decades. In Gujarat in 2002, mobs armed with swords and petrol slaughtered Muslims while Modi was chief minister, and the Sangh’s network stood behind them. In 2007, a bomb tore through the Sufi shrine of Ajmer Sharif—three RSS men were convicted and sentenced to life. In 2008, Swami Aseemanand, tied to the RSS, confessed to planting bombs in the Mecca Masjid and on the Samjhauta Express, attacks that killed dozens of Muslims. In Delhi in 2020, as mosques burned and Muslim homes were looted, men from Sangh affiliates were arrested for murder and rioting. In Kerala, courts handed life terms to RSS members for killing the president of a mosque committee. Even the 1984 anti-Sikh riots carried Sangh names in police records. This is the real face of the group Modi praised from the Red Fort.
These are not isolated crimes. They show the daily life of India’s minorities. Muslims lynched over beef. Mosques bulldozed. Neighborhoods walled off. Christians harassed under fake charges of conversion. Sikhs and Dalits told they do not belong. Courts have convicted RSS men. Victims have testified. Commissions have indicted them. Yet the prime minister chose to glorify the group.
The irony is cruel. The RSS never fought for India’s freedom. Its leaders stayed away from the Quit India Movement. They kept out of jail. They avoided British bullets. It was Congress, leftists, Muslims, Sikhs, peasants, workers who marched, bled, and died. From the Red Fort, Modi chose to honor the betrayers, not the martyrs.
For Pakistan, this is no surprise. The ideology that demanded Partition has now taken Delhi fully. What was whispered in RSS inner circles is now shouted from the ramparts of power.
The danger is not limited to India’s Muslims or Christians or Sikhs. A state built on Hindutva cannot be at peace with Pakistan or with any neighbor. Hate at home becomes aggression abroad. The poison of majoritarianism does not stay inside borders.
The world must not be fooled by the show of elections. Ballots alone do not make democracy. Democracy means protection of all citizens. Without that, it is fascism wrapped in voting rituals. Modi’s praise of the RSS was not about service. It was about hate. It was about blood.
On August 15, India spoke as a Hindu nation, not a secular republic. It spoke with pride in its majoritarian identity. It spoke without shame.
History will not remember Modi’s speech as a celebration of freedom. It will remember it as the day Indian secularism was cremated under the saffron flag. From Lahore to London, from Islamabad to Dhaka , and from Karachi to Kabul, the world must now see India as it is. Not the world’s largest democracy. The world’s largest nationalist and fascist Hindu state.
The Indian leadership is now free of all pretenses. It has saffronized not only its foreign policy but also its domestic policy. South Asia is facing the same kind of crisis that Israel has imposed on the Middle East. This attitude of racial supremacy, in which there is no space for other religions or nations, can become a grave threat to the region and to the world.