Australian envoy to India under fire for visit to right-wing Hindu group

Barry O’Farrell’s visit to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh lights up Indian social media after Australian Senator Janet Rice raises issue in parliament

Ex-Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar says visit was made for the sake of political expediency at a time when Australia’s relations with China are fraying

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Barry O'Farrell, left, visiting the headquarters of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in November. Photo: Twitter

Published: 10:43pm, 4 Dec 2020Updated: 3:11am, 5 Dec 2020

Calls for Australia’s envoy to India, Barry O’Farrell, to resign have gained steam after he visited the headquarters of Hindu right-wing organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the western Indian city of Nagpur last month.

Although analysts said O’Farrell’s visit was not a “violation of diplomatic decorum”, they saw it as a conspicuous attempt by Australia to “build bridges with” the ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which sprang from the RSS and has been accused of fomenting a racial divide in India. O’Farrell posted photographs of his November 15 visit to RSS headquarters on social media.

South Asian affairs analyst Pieter Friedrich, who started an online petition at Change.org calling for O’Farrell’s resignation, said it was “horrifying” to watch diplomats like O’Farrell and Germany’s ambassador to India, Walter J. Lindner, who visited RSS headquarters last year, willingly allow themselves to be used as “propaganda tools” of the RSS.

Members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh participate in a rally in December 2019 in support of India's new citizenship law on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Photo: AFP

The petition, which has received nearly 3,000 signatures, points out that two RSS affiliates – Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal – are listed as “religious militant organisations” by the US Central Intelligence Agency, adding that in 1999, Bajrang Dal was implicated in the murder of an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two sons in India.

The petition became a talking point on Indian social media after Australian Senator Janet Rice this week raised the issue of O’Farrell’s visit in parliament and demanded his resignation.

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