Why Modi needs RSS cover for dialogue with Pakistan

The sudden ceasefire after Operation Sindoor showed Narendra Modi that the support of the Hindutva base is not unconditional. It is predicated on giving no quarter to Pakistan. That is why he needs the blessing of the RSS to move forward with Pakistan.

The call for keeping open the doors of dialogue with Pakistan by Dattatreya Hosabale, general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has surprised many. It seems to contradict the Narendra Modi government's current security doctrine of non-engagement with Pakistan.

Hosabale’s description of Pakistan, which carried out the Pulwama terrorist attack, as a "pin prick", understates its brazenness and underplays its importance in helping Modi secure a second term as Prime Minister in 2019. Pulwama's "pin prick" in 2019 not only killed 40 Indian security personnel, but its memory also forced India’s hand in avenging the killing of 26 civilians in Pahalgam in 2025. The four-day war with Pakistan that followed significantly eroded India's military and diplomatic credibility.

While advocating an appropriate response to terrorism, Hosabale, however, felt, "We should not close the doors. We should always be ready to engage in a dialogue." He distinguished between Pakistan's government and military, which he said had lost India's confidence, and its people, adding, "People-to-people relations can ease India-Pakistan tensions because we have cultural links and we were once one nation. I strongly believe civil society contacts will ultimately help normalise ties." This statement will require some unwrapping.

Meanwhile, the Congress was quick to take a dig at Hosabale’s statements. Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh pointed out that the government's "bhakt brigade" would have "frothed, fumed and fulminated" on TV channels had such ideas been expressed by someone outside the RSS’ ideological fold. Ramesh observed that the most plausible trigger for Hosabale's remarks may have been the RSS’ Western outreach programme.

In its centenary year, the RSS faces growing scrutiny abroad. Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, and various international organisations have flagged the RSS’ role in the persecution of minorities in India. In March, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom named the RSS as a potential target for sanctions, citing its "responsibility and tolerance of severe violations of religious freedom." Hosabale’s proposal of a dialogue with Pakistan’s civil society seems to be an exercise calculated for Western consumption.

However, Hosabale's framing of a people-to-people peace dialogue is a non-starter. The distinction between the Pakistani State and civil society is hardly a new insight. It has underwritten Indian diplomacy towards Pakistan for the last three decades, spanning all governments and every phase of the bilateral relationship.

More critically, shunning the State and engaging the people has never worked in practice. Today, more than ever, such an engagement lacks a credible architecture. India’s most credible civil society organisations capable of conducting meaningful dialogue — independent think tanks, human rights groups, minority organisations, peace networks — have been decimated by the Modi government through FCRA licensing procedures. Those that remain are largely docile or are RSS-affiliated bodies implementing government projects and programmes.

According to Swedish V-Dem Institute’s data, India's civil society participation index fell drastically under Modi — from 0.84 in 2013 to 0.61 in 2023, its lowest in 47 years. In Pakistan, civil society is similarly State-dependent, with the military deciding the terms of any engagement with India. With no independent actors on either side, the suggestion is unworkable. Hosabale and the government must know this.

History also shows that unofficial Track-II dialogues and civil society contacts have rarely contributed to official dialogue. If anything, people-to-people engagement has been a consequence of official warming, never its cause. Without a State-level thaw, meaningful civil society contact is either impossible or marginal, confined to third countries facilitated by international think tanks.

So, were there no more compelling reasons for Hosabale’s gambit than refurbishing RSS’ image? The geopolitical context suggests otherwise.

Pakistan's global profile has undergone a significant makeover after Operation Sindoor, and has been further enhanced by Washington asking Islamabad to play a mediating role in the US-Israel war on Iran. India, by contrast, was diplomatically isolated among its ‘strategic partners’ over Operation Sindoor, and found itself on the wrong side of the Iran conflict due to Modi's ill-timed visit to Israel on the eve of the war. India's ties with the US have soured under Donald Trump and feel worse against Islamabad's increasingly cosy relationship with Washington.

After castigating India for not acknowledging his role in brokering a ceasefire during Operation Sindoor, Trump’s berating of India has not let up, including additional tariffs on Indian exports for purchasing Russian oil. India’s Right-wing that always vied for US affections, is bewildered. RSS leader Ram Madhav plaintively asked interlocutors in Washington DC, what more India could have done to please the US after it curtailed imports of Russian and Iranian oil and absorbed punitive tariffs without complaining (he later backtracked).

With the Pahalgam attack, Modi's Kashmir narrative has also come unstuck. The claim that normalcy had returned after 2019 was decisively punctured. A year on, with Pakistan's diplomatic star in the ascendant, it is becoming strategically costly to continue denying a dialogue with Pakistan. The RSS leaders’ US visit likely confirmed just how isolated India had become, and American pressure to recalibrate its Pakistan policy.

The BJP and the RSS share a playbook where the RSS floats a position the BJP government cannot officially articulate. Policy changes follow if public reaction is positive. Modi desperately needs such cover before he can even explore reopening a dialogue with Pakistan.

However, softening on Pakistan is very likely to be seen as an ideological betrayal by the BJP’s Hindutva voter base.

Pakistan is not merely a foreign policy issue for the BJP's Hindutva base; it is a constitutive element of its identity. BJP election campaigns and religious polarisation of voters draw their energy from an anti-Pakistan framework. When the RSS, as head of Hindutva's ideological fount, declares that the door for dialogue should not be closed, it can be presented not as appeasement but as civilisational wisdom.

Following the West Bengal victory, Modi’s image has become stronger and might allow him to address this thorny issue with greater confidence. Even so, Modi needs his ideological flank to be protected. The sudden ceasefire after Operation Sindoor showed him that the support of the Hindutva base is not unconditional. It is predicated on giving no quarter to Pakistan.

That is why Modi needs the blessing of the RSS to move forward with Pakistan.

Hosabale has obliged Modi by advocating dialogue, couched in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ idea — that is what the rhetoric of "we were once one nation" does. This is the political cover Modi needs to make his rigid Pakistan policy more flexible, without alienating his base.

Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)