VHPA’s Indian counterpart, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which is the religious wing of RSS was designated as a religious militant organisation by the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The VHPAwas established by four RSS members in 1970 and formally incorporated in numerous American states in 1974.

Although the VHPA, which now has nearly 25 chapters in the US, claims to be legally separate from its Indian counterpart, its website mentions the group shares and is inspired by the “same values and ideals” as those followed by VHP India.  For decades, VHP has campaigned to turn India into a Hindu nation and orchestrated and participated in violence against India’s religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians. The VHP militants played a central role during the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, in which 2000 Muslim men, women, and children were burned, raped, and hacked to death. Just recently (July 2022), VHP organized an event in India where its members reiterated calls to kill the country’s 200 million Muslims.

The VHPA follows its Indian parent group in encouraging militant, including violent, behavior among Hindus. For instance, The VHPA provided support during the aftermath of the Indian VHP’s successful movement to illegally demolish the Babri Masjid, a premodern mosque in Ayodhya, a north Indian city.

At the event, Uma Bharati, a key agitator in the 1992 mosque destruction, used her American stage to denounce Hindus who did not support militancy, yelling at a nonviolent crowd in Washington, D.C.: “To those of you who say you are ashamed to be Hindus, we want to tell you: we are ashamed of you. After December 6, the tiger has been let out of the cage.’” A year later, in 1994, the president of the VHPA, Yash Pal, made a speech commemorating Hindu militants who had been killed in 1990 and called for the diaspora to support the BJP. Building on this transnational embrace of militancy, in 1998 the VHPA issued a ten-point code of conduct for Hindus, including encouraging “assertiveness and aggressiveness.” Even in the 2020s, a common talking point among the Hindu supremacists is that Hindus are too peaceful and should become more bellicose in order to advance their ideas.

The VHPA established other groups to disseminate Hindu supremacist propaganda, most notably the Hindu Mandir Executives’ Conference (HMEC) in 2006. HMEC works with Hindu temples and the online magazine Hinduism Today to promote Hindutva literature and disinformation, especially targeting second-generation Indian Americans. The VHPA itself has continued to platform militants and hate mongers in recent years.

Recently, VHPA launched HinduPact, a “think tank” to target Muslims and critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies in the US.

VHPA invites notorious Hindutva ideologues and leaders from India such as Sadhvi Ritambra, Yogi Adityanath, Subramanian Swamy and other office bearers of the RSS itself. In 2015, the Council for a Parliament of World Religions withdrew from an event organized by the VHP-America precisely because of the hateful rhetoric of invited speakers like Dr. Swamy, who called for the destruction of mosques and the disenfranchisement of India’s Muslims. Following are some of VHPA’s guests:

• VHP America invited Yati Narasinghanand who has said Hindus should kill Muslims
• VHP America invited White Supremacist/Islamophobe Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch as a main speaker on their HinduPACT program and openly called Muslims as villians to be containedVHP America invited Yati Narasinghanand who has said Hindus should kill Muslims
• VHP America invited White Supremacist/Islamophobe Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch as a main speaker on their HinduPACT program and openly called Muslims as villians to be contained

The objective of VHP-A and others in organizing such events in the U.S. is to inject Hindutva into the Hindu population in the US, and to raise funds to advance its nefarious goals in India. Hindutva votaries have taken control of hundreds of Hindu temples across the US, and are running countless Sunday schools where the hatred of Muslims, Dalits and Christians is a staple diet.