VARANASI, INDIA -- The Economist once called it the largest non-communist organization in the world. One of its activists killed India’s beloved independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi. Fascist, theocratic, chauvinist and militant are only a few of the epithets hurled at its members.

But to those members it is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Roughly translated as the National Volunteers Union and commonly known as the RSS, the organization claims more than seven million adherents across the subcontinent dedicated to Hindu nationalism and the idea that India is, first and foremost, a Hindu nation.

It is a top-down organization, with more than 25,000 chapters all over India but concentrated in the countryside. Each chapter, or shaka, gathers daily for an hour of calisthenics, discussion and prayer, and these meetings are also known as shakas.

Just off Assi Ghat, on the banks of the holy Ganga (formerly Ganges) River in the city of Varanasi, dozens of young boys gathered for an evening session one night last month. They came from nearby apartments to a packed sand courtyard that was home only to one ragged sawtooth oak and a nondescript, white shack off to the side that serves as a Hanuman temple.

Dressed in varying degrees of conformity to the RSS uniform, which consists of pleated khaki shorts, a white, collared long-sleeved shirt folded to the elbows, black shoes and a black cap, the students ranged in age from 5 and 6 to their mid-20s. Their instructors were middle-aged men who themselves had been attending the shakas since childhood.

Their leader, who gave only the name Gyanesh, called out orders as the games portion of the gathering began. Resembling a Hindu version of boy scouts, they stood in line shortest to tallest, wrapped their arms around the waist in front of them, and started running, worm-like, shouting and cheering and soon tripping over each other’s feet.

“The aim is higher nationality,” explained Gyanesh. “How we can grow, that is our goal.”

After the games came what appeared to be a martial arts segment, complete with lunges and sharp arm movements punctuated with "hiyas." “Judo karate,” explained another RSS volunteer, but was quickly corrected by his friend. “Niyud,” a long-time Varanasi resident Devesh Tripathi interrupted. “An Indian martial art.”

RSS volunteers show off their martial arts prowess. (Ari Paul)

The RSS was founded in 1925, by Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, “to save Hinduism from conversions of Christians and Muslims,” as Tripathi put it. Initially set up as an anti-colonial movement, its main goal was to unite Hindus across caste and linguistic lines. Christian and Muslim missionaries would target low-caste Hindus, so the RSS, then and today, created programs targeting poverty and economic development to keep Hindus within their fold.

Often called the “saffron brotherhood” along with their allies in the World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or VHP) and the Bharata Janata Party (BJP), the RSS-led network is united under a banner of Hindutva. Saffron is considered the color of Hinduism, but Hindutva is not essentially theology. Instead, it is an idea that imagines India as a motherland and a holy land and its followers take up strident nationalism in the name of her defense.

“We don’t pray to God here, we don’t salute a person,” Tripathi explained, “we pray to the flag.” The children lined up in rows and faced a short pole with a limp orange cloth hanging from its top. This was not the Indian flag, but the Hindutva flag. “Bharat Mata ki jai!” the ragtag bunch shouted, “long live Mother India!”

Tug-of-war, Bharat Mata style. (Ari Paul)

Abhay Pandey, a government employee at Banaras Hindu University who now serves as the RSS head in Varanasi, described his initial attraction to the group. “My family was involved,” he recalled in halting English. “My father was active in RSS,” he continued, “he would work for society, for nation, for deprived persons.”

“We are sons of Bharat Mata,” Pandey said, referring to the motherland. “Our duty, and our worship, is to work for nation.” He thought for a moment, and then clarified, “not only state.”

Even though the RSS stresses its “social and cultural” activities and vocally denies any stake in politics, the group is generally understood as the parent organization of the right-of-center BJP.

The BJP rose to power in 1992, after a national dispute over a 400–year-old mosque in the town Ayodhya that was allegedly built above the ruins of an ancient Hindu temple. Its leaders helped incite a mob that eventually tore down the mosque. A decade later, local Hindutva leaders in Gujarat were accused of participating in the communal slaughter of more than 1,000 Muslims after several dozen Hindus were killed in a train fire, allegedly set by Islamic militants. By 2004, the BJP-led coalition was knocked out of power by the secular Congress Party, though it still controlled many state governments throughout India.

As in Iraq, where Sunnis and Shiites increasingly turn to sectarian leadership for protection since no central force has successfully clamped down on the violence, so, too, communal appeal in India often waxes and wanes with the level of security. “It’s a patronage kind of thing,” said Mannika Chopra, a Delhi-based journalist.

In Varanasi, where bomb blasts killed four and injured dozens last month, Hindus and Muslims have a long, if storied, history of living relatively peacefully together. Varanasi’s Hindus participate in the Muslim holiday of Muharram, and worship at Sufi shrines. The legendary Muslim flute player and one of Varanasi's most celebrated locals,Ustad Bismallah Khan, often plays devotional songs at Hindu temples.

But after the Ayodhya violence, Varanasi’s local Hindi papers published fictionalized accounts of Hindus being killed at a nearby Muslim university and other bouts of Hindu-Muslim violence.

The usually joyful Saraswati Puja, a Hindu holiday celebrating the goddess of knowledge, took a sinister turn this year as the RSS marched in the street carrying swords.

“Young people start with the RSS, and spend two or three years with them and grow disillusioned,” said Priyankar Upadhyaya, a professor at Banaras Hindu University, describing the experience of some members. “Even the bomb blasts for the RSS people were more a tamasha than anything else,” he said, referring to a word used in India meaning show, or entertainment.

“They are basically good people, who want to do good,” Upadhyaya said. “You take away hatred of Muslims and there is not much left.”

The RSS depends on an international fundraising network of Indian expatriates to survive. Dr. Upadhyaya explained that he comes across RSS activists when he visits the U.S. more often than he does in India. “I spent time with Sudarshan in North America,” he recalled, naming the RSS chief. “They just don’t understand the practical implications.”

If the RSS depends on anti-Muslim sentiment as a binding force, they also believe the opposite is true. K.S. Sudarshan offered in an interview with The Indian Express last year, “Pakistan’s identity depends on its enmity with India. If this is removed, then Pakistan will be finished.”

Back at Assi Ghat, the shaka leader, Gyanesh, was finishing up a story about how the 17th century Sikh leader, Guru Gobind Singh, lost his family to Emperor Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor who was forcing Hindus to convert to Islam or be killed. Instead of surrendering, Gyanesh explained, Singh solidified Sikhism in order to protect Hinduism.

“If your country needs you, will you go to the borders?” Gyanesh shouted in Hindi during the final exercise of the evening. They all raise their hands eagerly.

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Two worshipers leaving Lord Krishna's birthplace, in Mathura. (Amanda Millner-Fairbanks)

“India’s about as remote as you can get,” mused Emma Goldman, as she sat in the restaurant inside the Radha Ashok Hotel in Mathura, deep in the “Hindi Heartland” of Utter Pradesh. “But I watched ‘Almost Famous’ this morning and now I’m eating fried eggs and ketchup.”

Her father, Professor Ari Goldman, sat next to her in a gray hooded sweatshirt splattered in bright pink and green from yesterday’s Holi festivities.

The group entered the eighth day of its journey through India hunkered down inside the hotel, waiting out the marauding bands that stood just outside the gated compound, paint balloons in hand.

It was the second day of Holi, or “Big Holi,” when Hindus and non-Hindus alike celebrate the triumph of good over evil with bhang—mashed marijuana leaves boiled with milk—and brightly colored powder and water mixtures known as gulal.

Mathura is a famous Hindu pilgrimage site as the birthplace of Lord Krishna, the blue-skinned god of the Bhagavat Gita. Hindus believe that Krishna particularly enjoyed the holiday, as he relished flirting with girls and playing with friends, so Holi takes on even greater significance in this region. The celebrating begins as early as 7 a.m., but by early afternoon, “it becomes calm down,” as Punit Upadhyay at the Radha Ashok front desk described. Most of the class waited inside, but three brave souls stepped out for a walk into town.

Before 11 a.m., that team returned, bewildered, their faces and clothing covered in even deeper shades of pink and green than the day before. “After they hit you, they hug you three times,” said Goldman, as the trio explained they had been hit by Holi revelers even before they made it into town. Bruce Wallace was offered a “cigarette” by a boy who appeared no older than 10.

Finally the group filed onto the bus and headed out after 4 p.m., driving through streets that had taken on a languorous, post-Mardi Gras-esque air. Men and women covered in color strolled about, in step with the cows that also showed evidence of merrymaking: they too hadn’t escaped the gulal.

After dodging monkeys down an alley of bookstalls, the group underwent security checks. Women went through physical searches, men through metal detectors, and they reached Krishna Janmasthan, the site of Krishna’s birth. The temple has been a target for terrorist activity and communal strife ever since a mosque was built next door 500 years ago. But today even the guards were in good spirits as they gleamed with a bright pink hue as they watched over Krishna’s holy site.

“He was born 5,000 years ago,” explained the group’s local tour guide, Deepak Baradwaj. “Krishna was born in a jail.” Fortune-tellers predicted that a child would overthrow King Kansa, so the monarch killed all children born around that time. Krishna’s parents were imprisoned, and the king awaited their newborn, but Krishna’s mother had been told in a dream that her son would be a reincarnation of Vishnu.

As this was the first Hindu temple the group visited, and also the most foreign religion to many students, they tried to filter their understanding through their own experiences.

“Was Krishna born to a virgin mother?” asked Mariana Martinez, a Mexican Catholic, as she looked upon the actual spot considered Krishna’s birthplace. She stood in a dank, dark room that held only a simple raised shrine under six colorful panels depicting the story of his birth. Just as Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary, a birth foretold by the archangel Gabriel, so too Krishna’s birth was prophesized and divinely conceived.

In order to save the baby, Krishna’s parents snuck him out of jail in a basket of rushes and replaced him with a girl. “This is a similar story to Moses,” observed the Israeli-born Dikla Kadosh. Moses, too, was born in captivity and escaped through a basket of rushes sent down a river.

When Kansa came to kill Krishna, he picked up the baby girl to throw to the ground. Instead the goddess Durga appeared, saying that the one who would kill him was still alive. Krishna was then raised by the community and was a mirthful child, stealing yogurt and butter from the cowherds. In his youth, he became a playful, womanizing god who had 16,108 wives.

The temple opened to a tree-lined courtyard, with colorful pieces of cloth tied on every branch. Mannika Chopra translating the guide's story, said that maidens used to bathe in the river naked and Lord Krishna told them not to. When they continued to do so, he mischieviously tied their clothes to the trees. Today devotees mimic this story, and make wishes as they tie bits of sari to the trees.

“Krishna is portrayed as so human,” said fellow student Aili McConnon as she looked on the throngs of worshippers that had come to end Holi with offerings to Lord Krishna. “It’s nice to see Krishna’s birthplace, who is so mischievous, on such a mischievous holiday as Holi.”

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Jenny Chocko sat at a small round wooden table in a red salwar kameez and a black scarf pulled lightly around her head. She had a sore throat and a congested voice, but was determined to complete the last 10 minutes of Sunday school for children at the Malankara Catholic Church in Long Island, a congregation made up of Indian immigrants from Kerala who follow Syrian rites, but reconciled with the Vatican in the early 20th century. Their service is held each weekend at The Immaculate Conception Center, a sprawling campus for the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, but technically in Douglaston, NY.

More than 30 families attended the two-hour service conducted in Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerela. Their children stayed behind for a half-hour class taught in English, in small groups by Chocko, several other church mothers and two nuns.

“Samuel was sleeping one day at a temple,” said Chocko, referring to the Old Testament prophet who is the subject of this week’s lesson. Stacy and Amal, both seven, and Christy, eight, climbed into the other seats at Chocko’s table. “Stacy, what’s a temple?”

Stacy, with haphazard bangs, a palm-tree ponytail, and two missing front teeth, hesitated a moment. Then she remembered, and jumped up. “It’s like a church!” she cried.

“So Samuel was asleep, and God called him.” Chocko continued reading, as her students followed along in Glory to the Triune God, a coloring-book style introduction to the Malankara Catholic catechism. The books are standardized and shipped over from India, complete with a young Indian boy on the cover, three fingers clasped, touching his forehead in prayer. Chocko looked up, “Who is God?” she asked.

All three children sat up straight and pointed upwards.

“And how does Samuel respond?”

“Say what you have to say, I’m hearing,” said Christy, a girl with pinch-worthy cheeks in earrings and a purple selwar kameez. “I’m listening,” Chocko corrected.

“And Samuel was a prophet,” Chocko continued reading in Lesson Eight; “Samuel Whom God Called.” “Who is a prophet?”

The children were stumped. “Is Garfield a prophet?” Chocko prodded. “Yes!” her students giggled and answered in chorus.

Chocko sighed and repeated, “Who is a prophet? Was Moses a prophet?” This time Stacy had an answer. “Someone who’s going to lead!” she cried.

Samuel is considered an important Old Testament prophet, and the last of the Hebrew judges in Rabbinical literature. His story is told in the Book of Samuel, and as a young child, he began to receive communications from God. A mysterious voice came to him one night, and on the instruction of his teacher, Eli, he responded, "Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth." Samuel foretold the destruction of Eli’s own sons, and went on to become the spiritual power of Israel.

“And what did Heli mean,” Chocko read, “when he told Samuel ‘If he calls you again, you shall say: Speak, Lord, for your servant hears?’ We should hear the call of God and do his will?”

“We should listen to God,” started Christy, as she stared in her catechism-coloring book at a purple-robed God holding a young Samuel’s hand. “And like, do what he says?”

“Yes,” Chocko smiled wearily. “So when you pray tonight, think about that.”

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