US media pre-frames RSS Universal Oneness Celebration

NEW YORK, August 28: Something curious has been unfolding in New York this week. Dr Mohan Bhagwat has not yet delivered his keynote address at Madison Square Garden; that happens on August 29 afternoon. Yet anyone following the American and international coverage of his visit could be forgiven for feeling that much of the argument over what his presence here means has already taken place. I have been reading the reports as they have appeared through the week. They are not identical, nor do all of them reach precisely the same conclusions. Yet certain descriptions and associations recur with striking regularity: “Hindu nationalist”, Narendra Modi, the BJP, majoritarianism, minorities, protests, sanctions and international influence. By the time the Universal Oneness Celebration itself enters some of these accounts, the reader has already been given a fairly developed framework through which to understand it. This does not make the reporting false. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is a century-old organisation of enormous consequence in contemporary India, and questions about its philosophy, politics, relationship with the BJP, treatment of minorities and international networks are entirely legitimate. What interests me is something more fundamental to journalism: how does a disputed political characterisation, repeated across publications…