London: Kashmir Centre files a Home Office exclusion dossier on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and refers him to the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council for assessment of potential public-order and religious-hatred offences. He is already in New York. London is next.
The Kashmir Centre has told the Home Secretary to keep Mohan Bhagwat out of Britain and has separately referred his planned London programme to the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council for investigation of any potential criminal conduct. The message is deliberately simple: this should not be treated as a diplomatic courtesy call or ordinary community event.
Bhagwat is Sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader/Chief) of the RSS, the ideological parent of the BJP and the organisation from which Narendra Modi emerged politically. He landed in New York on 25 August on a centenary tour of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The RSS has advertised community-leadership programmes in London. That is not a temple visit. It is an overseas political operation masquerading as a global outreach programme.
In April, this government barred Valentina Gomez from entering Britain because her presence was deemed not conducive to the public good. In June, it barred Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker on the same basis. The government has therefore already demonstrated that this power can be used against foreign political activists and commentators across the ideological spectrum. Bhagwat leads an organisation the Indian government banned in 1948 in the aftermath of Gandhi's assassination, banned again during the Emergency in 1975, and banned again after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. If the public-good test means anything, it cannot be a one-way street.
The British intervention comes as the tour is already a fight in the United States. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he does not support Bhagwat's Madison Square Garden event and described the RSS as an exclusionary project. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has urged Washington to consider targeted sanctions against RSS members and Indian officials, including revoking Bhagwat's US visa.
Dr Muzzammil Ayyub Thakur, Executive Director of The Kashmir Centre, said:
'The RSS does not arrive in Britain as folklore. It arrives as an organisation with a long record of majoritarian politics, anti-minority mobilisation and association with some of the darkest episodes of communal violence in modern India. Bhagwat has repeatedly articulated the position that Muslims are Hindu by nationality and Muslim by faith. That is not theology. It is a theory of who counts. We will not watch it being franchised through British diaspora halls while ministers hide behind process.'
Keep him out. A formal dossier went to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on 25 August, copied to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. It demands an immediate assessment under the non-conducive-to-the-public-good provisions of the Immigration Rules, including SUI 3.1 and, where applicable, SUI 3.2, together with consideration of the relevant powers under the Immigration Act 1971. India is not an ETA nationality. Establish his immigration status and the basis on which he proposes to enter Britain. Identify the British hosts. Refuse the visit.
Put the London programme under criminal scrutiny. Separately, The Kashmir Centre is referring Bhagwat to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council. We will ask them to assess the public-order implications of the London events and whether any speech, publication or conduct connected with those events engages the stirring-up offences in the Public Order Act 1986. Speeches given in India are not, by themselves, a UK crime. Speech delivered or material disseminated in Britain may engage UK criminal law where the statutory requirements of an offence are met. If there is evidence of an offence, the police should investigate it.
What they do with that evidence must then be determined according to the law. What they should not do is ignore it. Leicester 2022 already showed what happens when imported communal politics meets British streets. The inquiry called that violence unprecedented, damaging and preventable. Prevention cannot simply mean a polite liaison meeting after the fact. It means asking the hard questions before the event, before the mobilisation and before the consequences arrive. Our position is clear: Bhagwat should not be given a respectable British stage.
This is not a campaign against Hinduism or British Hindus. It is a campaign opposing one man's visit, the organisation he leads and the political project he represents. The dossier is in. The police referral is going in. The plane is coming in. Act.
The Kashmir Centre has submitted a formal representation to the Home Secretary concerning Dr Mohan Bhagwat's proposed UK visit. A separate referral is being made to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council. The immigration submission relies on the Immigration Rules, including SUI 3.1-3.2, and applicable provisions of the Immigration Act 1971.
The police referral asks the relevant authorities to assess whether any specific speech, publication or conduct connected with Bhagwat's UK activities engages criminal offences under UK law, including the statutory offences concerning the stirring up of religious hatred. Copies of the formal submissions and supporting material are available to accredited journalists.