On Firing Line (4 September 2026) Salman Rushdie likened the RSS to the IRA. The author calls that historically false and ideologically backwards—either a slip or a nod to U.S. liberal taste.

In this telling the IRA (1919) fought British rule on secular, anti-imperial lines; the RSS (1925) sat out the independence struggle, wants a Hindu Rashtra, and suits “crony capital.” The piece says the IRA treated diversity as strength; Hindutva wants Hindi–Hindutva–Hindustan and second-class status for minorities. Rushdie once mocked “Modi toadies”; the RSS backed Satanic Verses at home but not Rushdie as a secular icon, while M.F. Husain left India under Hindutva threats.

Equating a “revolutionary” IRA with a “reactionary” RSS, the author argues, gives the Sangh unearned legitimacy and is the liberal habit of false balance. Rushdie knows the gap; the comparison, this essay says, undercuts his own brief against religious fundamentalism. Polemic, not a dual history.

During an interview with Margaret Hoover on her public affairs programme Firing Line Margaret Hoover, broadcast on 4 September 2026, author Salman Rushdie drew a comparison between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Such a shallow comparison is historically flawed and ideologically........

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