On September 29, 2008, bomb blasts tore through a crowded marketplace in the city of Malegaon in India’s Maharashtra state, where hundreds of Muslims were breaking their Ramadan fast just days before the holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The explosions killed six people and injured 101.

The bomb was planted by terrorists linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s oldest and largest Hindu-supremacist paramilitary group and the ideological parent of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some were workers for the RSS; others were members of the paramilitary’s many affiliate groups. It was a clear act of domestic terrorism, and yet sixteen years later, there has been no justice for the victims; the trial continues to drag on, and many of the accused in the case were granted bail and acquitted.

It wasn’t the only time the RSS had engaged in terrorism. The 2008 Malegaon blast was just one of at least nine bomb attacks on primarily Muslim victims orchestrated by the militant group between 2003 and 2008. The attacks targeted mosques, shrines, and trains in Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, and Rajasthan states. In one incident in November 2003, two bombs exploded at the Parbhani Masjid in Maharastra’s Parbhani city, killing one person and injuring thirty-four others. The 2008 bombing of Malegaon was the second time the city had been struck: in 2006, bombs exploded at a Muslim cemetery next to a mosque, just after Friday prayers on the holiday of Shab-e-Barat, killing thirty-seven.

Another bombing, in February 2007, targeted the Samjhauta Express, a train that ran between India and Pakistan. The blast killed sixty-eight people, most of them Pakistanis. In October of that same year, the Ajmer Dargah bombing targeted another group of Muslims breaking their Ramadan fast at a popular shrine, killing three people and injuring seventeen. Collectively, these nine terror attacks killed nearly 150 people.

The RSS is often referred to in global media as a paramilitary group — a violent militia with millions of members that has been implicated in massacres, lynchings, riots, mob demolitions of historic mosques, and even the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. But in the early 2000s, in pursuit of building support for the BJP, the RSS also functioned as a terrorist group and has suffered no lasting consequences for it. In fact, its terrorism has been rewarded by a section of India’s increasingly radicalized Hindu-nationalist voter base.

The ongoing relationship between the RSS and BJP has never been hidden. The RSS is the organization whose founders were early proponents of an ideology known as Hindutva, often translated as Hindu nationalism or Hindu supremacy. The ideology is heavily inspired by twentieth-century European fascist movements, declaring that India should be a Hindu ethnostate where religious minorities — especially Muslims — must be stripped of their human rights, subjected to mass violence, and treated as second-class citizens.

The BJP was the redux of a now-defunct political party spawned by RSS member Syama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 — a history that is noted with pride on the BJP’s official website. As such, their links are material as much as they are ideological: in 2020, one Indian media outlet estimated that one in five BJP ministers was affiliated with the RSS. This includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, who joined the RSS at age eight.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the RSS has used terrorism in the hopes of further polarizing relations between Hindus and Muslims. In 2022, one of the group’s former full-timers, Yashwant Shinde, filed an affidavit in which he accused the RSS of launching a series of terrorist attacks between 2003 and 2008 in a “conspiracy to ensure BJP’s victory in the election.” This plot involved senior leaders from the RSS, who organized what he labeled as a “bomb-training” camp: a workshop where young Hindu militants were taught how to assemble and detonate bombs.

“Thereafter,” the affidavit stated, “there was a plan to cause bomb blasts throughout the country.” Shinde implicated a BJP national secretary and a number of senior leaders of Hindu militant groups, including the current RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat — a man who, this January, was warmly invited by Prime Minister Modi to share a stage with him.

According to Shinde, the goal was not just to kill Muslims but to frame the minority community for the attacks as well. Other evidence backs this claim: in the city of Nanded in 2006, two Hindu militant group members died and three others suffered serious injuries after a bomb-making session went wrong. In the investigation that followed, police discovered fake beards and skullcaps — stereotypical attire of Muslim men — and a detailed plan to target a mosque in Maharashtra state.

This, Shinde reported, was aimed at fostering anti-Muslim sentiments among Hindus, cementing the stereotype of the violent Muslim terrorist and directing attention to the BJP, a party that has never shied away from demonizing Muslims in the name of “protecting” Hindus.

A statement from India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) during the 2008 Malegaon bombings trial aligns with this account. The blasts, the NIA testified, “were caused by the conspirators with an intention to terrorize people . . . to create communal rift” between Hindus and Muslims.

Shinde’s affidavit also declares this straightforwardly: “The RSS . . . carried out many bomb-blasts across the country, and with the help of biased police and one-sided media, blamed them on Muslims. That helped [the BJP] in the 2014 Lok Sabha (general) elections.”

In an interview with the Caravan, an Indian magazine, Shinde reemphasized his point when pressed by a reporter: “You said that these bomb blasts helped [the BJP] till 2014?”

Yes, Shinde insisted. The bombings “would keep appearing in the news, and they would keep reaping the benefits of that. And, in 2019, the ticket they gave to Pragya. . . . That was all already decided in order to satisfy the Hindu voter.”

He was here referring to Pragya Thakur, one of the key figures accused of the 2008 Malegaon bombing. Thakur is a Hindu-supremacist ascetic who called the murderer of Mahatma Gandhi a “patriot,” alluded to Indian minorities as “monsters of darkness,” and whose motorcycle had reportedly been strapped with the Malegaon bomb before it was detonated.

While still on trial, Thakur joined the ruling BJP and won a parliamentary seat in 2019 — the first person in Indian history to be accused of terrorism and still receive the backing of a major political party. As one Buzzfeed News headline described the endorsement, “The Most Toxic Candidate In The World’s Biggest Election Is A Holy Woman Who Wants To Start A Religious War With Muslims.” Clearly, she resonated with the most radicalized of the BJP’s supporters, receiving over 860,000 votes.

In 2023, a district court rejected Shinde’s request to be made a witness in the Nanded bomb blast case, waving away the affidavit on the grounds that Shinde had waited for a “a gap of 16 years” before coming forward, and that he never “gave any information to the investigative agency at any point of time.” His testimony, while aligned with details produced by previous investigations into the bomb attacks, has yet to be formally verified by a federal investigative agency.

But what does remain true is the fact that the BJP has provided cover for those who have been accused of terrorism, from the electoral endorsement of Pragya Thakur to the political pressure on the judiciary to acquit several Hindu-supremacist leaders accused of playing a role in the bombings. In 2015, one year after Modi took office, a prosecutor in the case reported that an officer of the federal government’s counterterrorism agency had ordered her to “go soft” on Thakur and her coconspirators — presumably to protect her bid for power. All four of the Hindu supremacists implicated in the Parbhani Masjid bombing were acquitted in 2016. Four more were acquitted in the Samjhauta Express blast case in 2019.

For victims and their families, the pain is ongoing. Meanwhile, the RSS’s massive influence aids the BJP in tearing at the very foundations of Indian democracy.

The RSS and the BJP cannot be readily disentangled. But the Indian judiciary and opposition parties can work to ensure that both face consequences for their actions. At a time when the BJP is weakened to the point of having to form a coalition government, the opposition must jump at the chance to pressure the judiciary to stand firm against Hindu-supremacist influences, call for these terror cases to be reopened, and sanction any parties or organizations that have used terrorism to gain power.

India’s allies, too, can play a role in pushing for justice. Rather than fawn over Modi, the Joe Biden administration should use the appropriate diplomatic tools to punish RSS and BJP leaders who were complicit in these acts of terror, as well as those who prolong the victims’ suffering by letting those accused of terrorist atrocities walk free.