But first, a clarification. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not refused permission to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-- RSS - to use Madison Square Garden. Nor has he ordered the event cancelled. What he has done is publicly oppose it.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is scheduled to address about 5,000 members of the Indian-American community at Madison Square Garden on August 29 at an event called the “Universal Oneness Celebration.” It is being organised by American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue as part of the RSS's centenary-year global outreach. Organisers describe it as a celebration of shared Hindu heritage and interfaith unity.

Mamdani's response was unusually direct. “I don't support the rally,” he said, while adding that he did not know whether New York City had jurisdiction to cancel a private event. He went further, saying he was in “deep opposition” to the ideology associated with the RSS and describing its vision as “exclusionary.”

That distinction matters. Madison Square Garden is a privately operated venue. The mayor cannot simply behave as though the venue were a city auditorium whose booking he can revoke because he dislikes the speaker. In fact, Mamdani himself recognised the legal problem.

Yet his intervention has transformed what was intended as an RSS centenary outreach programme into an international political controversy.

What was the RSS trying to do? The event is part of a much larger effort by the RSS to project itself internationally as a cultural and civilisational organisation rather than as the controversial Hindu nationalist movement.

Bhagwat is travelling through the United States, Canada and Britain during the RSS centenary year. The New York programme is intended to bring the RSS chief before a large Hindu-American audience and, significantly, a wider multicultural and interfaith audience.

RSS communications chief Sunil Ambekar has described the gathering as an interfaith event rooted in “open dialogue and mutual respect”. The organisation has invited people who want to understand the RSS's philosophy to attend.

This is strategically important. For decades, the RSS has been criticised in Western political and academic circles over its Hindu nationalist ideology and allegations concerning minority rights. The organisation rejects the charge that it is intolerant, describing itself as a Hindu-centred civilisational and cultural movement.

The timing of the New York event therefore matters. The RSS is not merely holding another diaspora gathering. It is attempting to explain itself to an American audience at precisely the moment when its ideological influence in India is at its greatest. And that is precisely why Mamdani's intervention has become so politically explosive.

Why does Mamdani object? Mamdani's explanation was not primarily about Israel, Gaza or India's foreign policy. He framed the issue around India itself.

As an Indian-American, he said, the India he was taught by his family was a pluralistic, secular republic in which everybody belonging to India had a place. He said he was troubled by what he regards as the rise of an exclusionary movement.

That is a remarkably political statement from a New York mayor.

Mamdani is simultaneously presenting himself as an American mayor defending New York's diversity and as an Indian-American commenting on the direction of Indian politics.

His Muslim identity inevitably adds another layer to the controversy. He is New York's first Muslim and Indian-American mayor. His mother is Indian, and he has repeatedly spoken about his connection with India. But it would be too simplistic — and unsupported by the available evidence — to conclude that he opposed the event merely because he is Muslim.

Mamdan's mother is the noted filmmaker Mira Nair, a hindu by birth, who did not convert to Islam by marrying a muslim professor. They migrated from Uganda to the USA and Zohran grew up in one of the boroughs of New York City opting for his fathers Islam religion.

There is a much more substantial political explanation. Mamdani has long been associated with a strongly pro-Palestinian political position. His views on Israel and Gaza are considerably more critical of Israel than those of India's present government. India, meanwhile, has developed an exceptionally close strategic relationship with Israel under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, particularly in defence, intelligence and technology.

India's foreign policy has nevertheless retained a formal commitment to Palestinian statehood and humanitarian concerns. The relationship is therefore not simply “India supports Israel”. It is a balancing act between a strategic partnership with Israel and India's traditional support for Palestinian aspirations.

Could that larger geopolitical divide have influenced Mamdani's attitude towards the RSS?

Possibly as part of his broader worldview, but there is no evidence that he opposed the Madison Square Garden event because of India's Gaza policy or its relationship with Israel. His public explanation was explicitly about the RSS's ideology and what he considers India's pluralistic tradition. That distinction should be preserved.

The irony of Madison Square Garden: There is also considerable symbolism in the venue itself. Madison Square Garden has already been used as one of the most spectacular stages for India's diaspora diplomacy.

Narendra Modi addressed a packed Indian-American audience there in September 2014, soon after becoming prime minister. The event became an important demonstration of the political influence of the Indian diaspora in America.

Five years later, Modi's diaspora diplomacy became even larger. At Houston's NRG Stadium, more than 50,000 Indian Americans attended the “Howdy, Modi!” event, where Modi shared the stage with then-President Donald Trump. Trump called the gathering historic and praised the Indian-American community.

The contrast is striking. Modi could stand before tens of thousands in Houston and appear alongside an American president. He could address the Indian diaspora at Madison Square Garden. Yet an RSS chief attempting a private diaspora outreach in the same iconic New York venue is now being publicly disowned by the city's mayor.

But there is an important difference between the Modi events and Bhagwat's programme. The Modi events were diaspora-community events involving India's elected prime minister and were part of a larger India-US diplomatic relationship. Bhagwat is the head of a voluntary ideological organisation. The RSS is enormously influential in India, but it is not the Indian government.

Mamdani is therefore not opposing the government of India holding an official event. He is objecting politically to a private event involving the leader of an organisation whose ideology he regards as exclusionary.

The RSS chooses dialogue over confrontation; The RSS's response has so far been notably restrained. Rather than demanding that the Indian government retaliate or turning the controversy into a diplomatic confrontation, Ambekar has essentially said: come and listen.

The organisation's message is that the event is inclusive, multicultural and open to people who want to understand the RSS. That may be more effective than a furious counterattack. Mamdani has handed the RSS something it did not have before: an opportunity to present itself as the victim of exclusion while claiming the moral high ground of dialogue.

The RSS can now tell American Hindus — and potentially other religious communities — that it is willing to engage its critics rather than silence them.

What about the BJP and the Modi government? The BJP has certainly not taken Mamdani's comments lying down, although it is important not to confuse BJP criticism with an official Indian government response.

BJP leader Nalin Kohli accused Mamdani of inconsistency. If Mamdani believes in pluralism, Kohli argued, then pluralism should include people whose views he dislikes. He questioned how the mayor could invoke pluralism while opposing Bhagwat's appearance.

That is a powerful political counterargument. Pluralism does not mean permitting only views one finds acceptable. Its harder test is whether unpopular or controversial organisations are allowed to speak within the law. At the same time, New Delhi has little incentive to turn the episode into a diplomatic crisis.

The Modi government has built an important strategic relationship with Washington and has substantial interests in maintaining strong ties with the United States. A quarrel with a city mayor over a private venue would be strategically disproportionate.

There is also a legal reality: Mamdani himself has conceded that the city may not possess the power to cancel the event. So the Indian government's relative silence should not necessarily be interpreted as weakness. It may be diplomatic restraint.

The bigger question: is this about Hinduism, Hindutva or India? That is ultimately what makes the controversy interesting. Mamdani is not objecting to a Hindu religious celebration as such. The organisers themselves describe the programme as an interfaith celebration of oneness. His objection is to the political and ideological association of the event with the RSS.

The RSS, conversely, says that its philosophy is fundamentally inclusive and that its objective is to unite Hindus while engaging wider society. Two competing definitions of pluralism have therefore collided in Manhattan.

Mamdani's definition says pluralism requires resisting movements that, in his judgment, define national belonging too narrowly. The RSS's definition says pluralism requires allowing even a movement criticised as majoritarian to explain itself publicly.

Neither side is likely to persuade the other. And this is where the Gaza-Israel question becomes relevant — not as the proven cause of the dispute, but as part of the increasingly complicated political landscape surrounding India.

Mamdani's progressive, pro-Palestinian politics place him at odds with many aspects of India's foreign-policy establishment. India's deepening relationship with Israel is particularly sensitive among sections of the American left and Muslim-American constituency.

But there is no evidence so far that Mamdani's opposition to Bhagwat's Madison Square Garden appearance was a calculated protest against India's Gaza policy. The more immediate explanation is simpler: Mamdani sees the RSS as representing an exclusionary conception of Indian nationalism; the RSS sees itself as a cultural movement unfairly portrayed by its critics.

Madison Square Garden has consequently become the stage for an argument that is much bigger than one rally. It is an argument about who gets to define India abroad. For Modi's India, the answer has increasingly been that the Indian diaspora is a strategic asset — a bridge between India and the United States, a source of investment, political influence and soft power.

For Mamdani, the answer is different. His India is the pluralist India he says he inherited from his family. And for the RSS, the Bhagwat event is an opportunity to tell the world that Hindu civilisational identity and pluralism need not be contradictory.

That debate will not end on August 29. In fact, Mamdani may have ensured that Bhagwat's message reaches a much larger audience than the 5,000 people expected inside Madison Square Garden. (IPA Service)