AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — Hindu nationalism, once a fringe ideology in India, is now mainstream. Nobody has done more to advance this cause than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of India’s most beloved and polarizing political leaders.
And no entity has had more influence on his political philosophy and ambitions than a paramilitary, right-wing group founded nearly a century ago and known as the RSS.
“We never imagined that we would get power in such a way,” said Ambalal Koshti, 76, who says he first brought Modi into the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the late 1960s in their home state, Gujarat.
Modi was a teenager. Like other young men — and even boys — who joined, he would learn to march in formation, fight, meditate and protect their Hindu homeland.
A few decades earlier, while Mahatma Gandhi preached Hindu-Muslim unity, the RSS advocated for transforming India — by force, if necessary — into a Hindu nation. (A former RSS worker would fire three bullets into Gandhi’s chest in 1948, killing him months after India gained independence.)
Workers at Mercedes factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to vote in May on United Auto Workers union
Game on for tourism bureaus across China after Harbin travel frenzy
China's Qingming holiday box office hits record high
Atletico boss Simeone sweating on Griezmann fitness
Google fires 28 employees after protest against cloud contract with Israel
What to know about the prison sentence for a movie armorer in a fatal shooting by Alec Baldwin
Messi sustains leg injury in Inter Miami win
Fire rages through Copenhagen's historic stock exchange, spire collapses
Closing arguments set in trial of an Arizona rancher charged in fatal shooting of unarmed migrant
5th China Xizang Tourism and Culture Expo opens in Lhasa
Longest ever case of Covid lasted 613 DAYS and turned into ultra
Mom, 28, forced to sell her dream car after forking out $40,000 in INTEREST alone over three years