The RSS has spent decades building an international ecosystem of charities, cultural bodies, donors and political influence. Bhagwat's centenary outreach seeks to consolidate it. The West has noticed.

Bhagwat's New York sermon offered the world an India where diversity is sacred and every citizen belongs. Back home, the reality is far less harmonious: food, faith, dress, history and citizenship its

If you ask me which was the greatest news story I reported or commented upon during my 53 years in journalism, I would answer without batting an eyelid: the eradication of smallpox from India.

The Taliban tried to silence Malala with a bullet. India's new fundamentalists wield sticks, censorship and intimidation. The weapons have changed; the instinct has not. Both fear the same enemy: a yo

The Church cannot preach courage to its flock while practising caution in the face of persecution. When Christians are attacked and sacred spaces desecrated, polite memoranda are no substitute for act

They write of democracy from rooms where democracy has never had to enter the kitchen, where equality is discussed beneath lights that never reveal the darkness outside.

According to Koenraad Elst, when Hedgewar started the RSS, he had purely pragmatic ends in mind. The first thing he had to guard against was British imperial surveillance. He carefully adopted secret-

Perhaps Mr Bhagwat had brought this beautiful version of India in his luggage. Perhaps it had cleared American immigration because unity, unlike some Indians, is still welcome in the United States.