Mohan Bhagwat has completed what was billed as a historic three-nation international outreach of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. America, Canada, and Britain were supposed to hear the RSS chief explain India, Hinduism, pluralism, and the great civilisational wisdom of Vaudhaiva Kutumbakam and lap it up without any questions. Apparently, according to the saffron totters, the world was awaiting enlightenment from Nagpur. It is doubtful that it happened.

Bhagwat's sermonising on the DNA of Bharat being imbued with the idea of unity in diversity, with diversity being respected, accepted, and protected, with the world being one family, and with the casual expulsion of anti-Muslims from the Hindu fold, might have been lovely. Unfortunately, for him, in this age when information travels faster than humans, unlike even a century ago, words have an irritating habit of travelling with history.

RSS, given its history of giving intellectual pursuits a social-distancing treatment, might have been under the impression that its chief was entering an information vacuum. However, the West already knows about the RSS. Journalists, academics, human-rights organisations, religious groups and diaspora activists have spent years examining its ideology, its relationship with the BJP and its role in Indian politics. In New York, 61 interfaith and secular organisations opposed the event, while Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly criticised the RSS's exclusionary vision.

So what exactly was Bhagwat trying to explain?

Perhaps the tour was never really meant for America, Canada or Britain. It was meant for India and, more specifically, for the television studios, social media armies and Sangh supporters there and back home trying to sell Hindutva's facade of universal appeal.

And there the expedition was an unqualified success. The double-, triple-, quadruple-, and pentuple-saffron machinery went into overdrive again. The carefully devised speech became a historic declaration. A diaspora gathering of "successful Indians" became proof of global acceptance.

The RSS itself presented the New York gathering as a triumph of global oneness, claiming thousands of delegates, hundreds of organisations and religious leaders from dozens of countries. Its supporters predictably embraced the narrative. Some Indian media outlets followed suit, reproducing the sham as evidence that Bhagwat had arrived on the world stage.

But there was a small problem. The world outside the Sangh echo chamber was not particularly impressed.

Some described the visit as a "goodwill tour" for Hindu nationalism, while other international coverage focused on the controversy surrounding the RSS and the protests against Bhagwat. It was obvious that the visit was framed around the controversy and the RSS's Hindu-nationalist politics.

Public relations tours are supposed to change perceptions. This one appears to have hardened it. Those who already admired the RSS applauded, and those who opposed it protested; meanwhile, those who were undecided were offered a dose of controversy. In an exercise in futility, Bhagwat preached oneness to people who had already made up their minds.

The irony is delicious. The RSS travelled thousands of kilometres to tell the West not to misunderstand the organisation. Yet much of the Western coverage did precisely what the RSS fears most. It placed the organisation's verbiage beside its political history.

Bhagwat said diversity must not merely be preached but practised. That sentence may ultimately prove to be the most damaging line of his entire tour, for it invites the obvious question: where is this practice?

Amusingly, Bhagwat travelled three countries, but credibility remained several thousand miles away.