The Opposition on Jattvibeday called RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s speech in New York city “hypocritical” and questioned why such remarks were made in the US and not in India.During the ‘One World, One Humanity’ faith leaders conference on Saturday, Bhagwat said, “If any Hindu thinks that there should be no Muslim in Bharat, he will not be a Hindu.”Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said the statement should be made in India, adding that in Hindu dharma, this is called “dhong” (hypocrisy).“Bhagwat should make such a statement in India rather than in America. You speak another thing in India, and speak quite differently when there is a protest against you in New York. In Hinduism, this is called hypocrisy,” he said.Owaisi cites Guj riotsAIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said, “This is the oldest trick in the RSS playbook: some words are for the world, and some are for its own members … Should we forget what happened to the Muslims of Gujarat under the RSS’s proxy rule?”AAP leader Saurabh Bhardwaj said Bhagwat should have uttered these words to his chief ministers who engage in communal politics.“He should tell this to leaders like Anurag Thakur, Kapil Mishra, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Yogi Adityanath and Suvendu Adhikari, who often make headlines with statements that spread hatred between Hindus and Muslims,” he said.RJD MP Manoj Jha questioned why Bhagwat made these remarks abroad, pointing to political rhetoric and anti-Muslim statements by leaders in India. He urged him to demonstrate the same message domestically.In a post on X, TMC’s Rajya Sabha member Sagarika Ghose said the RSS was busy dismantling liberal democracy, crushing individual freedoms, undermining the open economy and waging Hindu-Muslim conflict to gain power.She said, “The sheer hypocrisy and duplicitousness of it all. Mohan Bhagwat travels to New York—in a liberal democracy that protects individual freedom, sustains a free economy and embraces pluralism—to declaim on Hindu-Muslim harmony.” “Back home in India, the RSS and the BJP are busy dismantling liberal democracy, crushing individual freedom, undermining the open economy and daily waging Hindu-Muslim conflict to gain power. Has Bhagwat ever looked in the mirror?” she asked.Several protesters had rallied outside Madison Square Garden with slogans like ‘The RSS has got to go’ ahead of Bhagwat’s event, where he was set to address nearly 5,000 people. The New York event was part of the RSS centenary-year global outreach programme, which also includes Canada and the UK.