Got yourself a dreaded case of the Mondays? Start your week off right by catching up on last week's episode of the Hell Gate Podcast. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch our beautiful faces on our YouTube channel.
On Saturday around noon, a few hundred people convened on the sidewalk outside Madison Square Garden to protest the "Universal Oneness Celebration," an event ostensibly about interfaith unity that tapped Mohan Bhagwat—leader of the far-right Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—as its keynote speaker.
A coalition of people wearing saris, hijabs, dastars, and keffiyehs showed up to condemn Bhagwat and the RSS, which has been connected to violence against Muslims, Sikhs, Dalits, Christians, and other religious minorities in India. Protesters carried signs reading "Hindutva Out of NYC" and "Hindutva is Fascism." Others led chants of "RSS, you can't hide, you're committing genocide" through megaphones.
Sri Bhavna, with the South Asian leftist group SALAM, which co-organized the protest, told Hell Gate that holding an event at Madison Square Garden "is a huge opportunity for visibility for the RSS, so that's why it's even more important for us to show up as dissenters, as people who say no to fascism."