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The Kashmir Centre calls on UK government to bar RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat from Britain and refers him to Metropolitan Police
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The Kashmir Centre has submitted a formal evidential dossier to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, calling for an urgent individualised assessment of RSS Sarsanghchalak Dr Mohan Bhagwat under the non-conducive-to-the-public-good provisions of the UK Immigration Rules, ahead of his planned visit to London as part of the RSS's centenary-year overseas programme. Simultaneously, the Centre has filed criminal referrals with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the National Police Chiefs' Council, requesting assessment of whether statements or conduct connected with Bhagwat's planned London programme engage the stirring-up-of-religious-hatred offences under the Public Order Act 1986.
Bhagwat arrived in New York on 25 August 2026 for the first stage of a three-country tour covering the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The RSS states the London leg includes community-leadership programmes. The Kashmir Centre states this is not a cultural or religious visit. It is an organised political operation by the head of an organisation the Indian government itself banned three times, in 1948, 1975, and 1992, and which is widely documented as the ideological parent of the BJP and the political formation through which Narendra Modi rose to power.
The Centre's Executive Director Dr Muzzammil Ayyub Thakur states that 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. He states that Bhagwat's repeated public position that Muslims are Hindu by nationality and Muslim by faith only is not theology. It is a theory of who counts, and the Kashmir Centre states it will not watch it being franchised through British diaspora halls.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has stated he does not support Bhagwat's planned Madison Square Garden event, describing 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.
The UK government has in 2026 alone barred Valentina Gomez on public-good grounds in April and cancelled the Electronic Travel Authorisations of Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker in June on the same basis. The Kashmir Centre states the same legal framework must be applied consistently, regardless of the ideology or nationality of the individual under assessment. The dossier is submitted. The referrals are filed. The plane is coming. The UK government must decide.
Join The Kashmir Centre x Words of Justice campaign here:
https://wordsofjustice.org/campaigns/kc/revoke-rss-chief-bhagwat-uk-visa
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