When Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat arrived in Britain on September 3 on the last leg of an international tour that had started in the US on August 25 and also taken him to Canada, no exact schedule had been made public.
Despite not having any confirmation of his movements, protesters gathered outside Parliament Square in London on Sunday, the day before Bhagwat’s visit was expected to conclude.
With the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben serving as a symbolic backdrop, the demonstrators aimed to send two messages: that they rejected the Hindu majoritarianism of the RSS and were rebuking the UK for its official silence on the visit.
Participants from an array of campaign organisations, diaspora groups, students and academics assembled through the afternoon, Palestine flags mixed in with placards reading, “Never Forget Gujarat Genocide, 2002”, “Diaspora united against fascism” and “Inquilab Zindabad” – long live the revolution. Another sign addressed UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham: “Will you ban RSS?”
Among the participants was a high school teacher who said that the diaspora needed to show up at protests such as this one because the RSS’s politics enables repression in India. As evidence, she pointed to the case of Swatantra Bhardwaj, the Hindutva influencer whose interview went viral on social media last week for boasting that he had assaulted the father of a student activist.
The teacher claimed that Bhagwat’s ability to travel to the West and “get millions and billions from his crony capitalists friends to fund their repression back in India” made visible opposition all the more necessary.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
