Mayor Zohran Mamdani found time in his busy schedule to condemn a visit to New York two weeks ago by the head of an Indian nonprofit that almost none of his constituents had ever heard of.
The visitor was Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, the vast Hindu volunteer organization that trained Prime Minister Narendra Modi and founded the party he leads. On Aug. 29, Mr. Bhagwat addressed some 5,000 people at Madison Square Garden at an event billed as a celebration of “universal oneness.” Mr. Mamdani, when pressed at a news conference to cancel the booking, called the RSS’s Hindu nationalist vision “exclusionary” and its rise “incredibly troubling,” while conceding the city had no authority over a private event.