Let India’s Hindu nationalist leader speak about ‘oneness.’ Then let him answer.

(RNS) — This weekend the leader of India’s Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, will address thousands of Hindu Americans at New York’s Madison Square Garden at an event purporting to celebrate “universal oneness.” It’s the first stop on a tour of the United States, Canada and Britain to recognize the RSS’s 100th year.

American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue is hosting the rally, supported by 135 other Hindu American organizations, from temples to yoga and cultural groups. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has asked Washington to withhold diplomatic courtesies from RSS leaders and to weigh sanctions. Others want him kept out altogether.

I do not join the call to boycott Bhagwat’s entry into America.

I am an Indian church leader whose institutions are audited, surveilled and accused of taking foreign money to change the country. I know what it costs when a government decides that a religious community’s foreign ties make it suspect. I will not ask a foreign government to do to Bhagwat what my own government is doing to us. I have argued that governments should require the RSS to…