At least 90 U.S. politicians and candidates have pledged to reject “RSS-linked” money; Rep. Ro Khanna said he would return $6,600. The author notes candidates may refuse any donor, and foreign nationals cannot give—but “RSS-linked” can tag a lawful American by association, not by a proven illegal act.

She traces U.S. loyalty history: Truman’s EO 9835, McCarthy-era blacklists, then Court limits in NAACP v. Alabama, Scales, Elfbrandt, Keyishian, Robel, Healy—membership is not guilt without intent to further a crime. Returning a check is not a loyalty firing; the warning is the method: judge the person by the group.

Unanswered: what counts as a link—old shakha, Sangh-adjacent charity, a Modi/BJP vote, MSG on 29 August? FEC already says a surname is not proof of foreign status. Investigate illegal foreign direction, straw donors or violence; don’t make ideology a standing test. Indian Americans on both sides of Hindutva are Americans under U.S. law.

From Cold War loyalty investigations to landmark U.S. Supreme Court protections against guilt by association, America has spent decades drawing the line between legitimate scrutiny and political association. A campaign against donations from Americans described as “RSS-linked” reopens an old and difficult American question: should citizens be judged by what they do—or by the organisations and ideologies with which they are associated?

The U.S. has always absorbed not only immigrants, but their arguments. The Irish brought the politics of Ireland; Cubans brought the passions surrounding Castro; Jewish and Palestinian Americans brought profoundly competing narratives of the Middle East; Iranian Americans brought the unresolved arguments of revolution, exile and regime change. As Indian Americans have grown in numbers, prosperity and political influence, it was inevitable that some of India’s ideological battles would travel with them.

There is nothing particularly alarming about this. It is what immigrant democracies do. America has never required newcomers to abandon their political memories at the border. Its achievement has been something more difficult: absorbing those memories and disagreements into an American constitutional system in which competing beliefs can coexist without disagreement itself becoming a disqualification from political life.

It is in this context that a new campaign involving the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the century-old Indian Hindu organisation whose ideological influence extends deeply into contemporary Indian politics, deserves closer attention.

At least 90 U.S. politicians and candidates have now pledged to reject contributions connected with the RSS and its affiliates. The initiative has attracted prominent political figures, including Representatives Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal. Khanna has also said he would dispose of a $6,600 contribution from a donor identified as having RSS ties.

The campaign did not suddenly originate with RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s August 29 appearance at Madison Square Garden. An earlier initiative existed in Illinois. But Bhagwat’s visit, the protests surrounding it and the subsequent expansion of the pledge have pushed what was once largely an argument within sections of the Indian diaspora into a much more visible arena of U.S. electoral politics.

There is nothing inherently undemocratic about a politician refusing a contribution. Candidates routinely return money from donors whose views or activities they find objectionable. Nor should concerns about foreign influence in U.S. elections be dismissed. American elections belong to Americans, and federal law rightly prohibits foreign nationals from making political contributions.

The difficulty lies elsewhere. The present campaign potentially creates a political category around an American donor who may not have broken any law at all. The objection may instead be that the individual is considered “RSS-linked”.

That apparently simple hyphenated expression raises a question with a long and uncomfortable history in the U.S.: when does legitimate scrutiny of an organisation become guilt by association?

America Has Been Here Before

The most obvious historical parallel lies in the early years of the Cold War. The threat confronting the U.S. was real. The Soviet Union was an adversarial power, espionage existed and Communist organisations were part of an international ideological movement openly hostile to much of the American political system.

Yet legitimate concerns about espionage and subversion gradually became entangled with something more indiscriminate. In 1947, President Harry Truman established a federal loyalty programme under Executive Order 9835. Federal employees and applicants could be investigated for their loyalty, and associations with organisations considered subversive became relevant to those investigations.

The programme predated Senator Joseph McCarthy’s rise to national prominence, but it belonged to the political climate from which McCarthyism would emerge. Investigations spread, congressional hearings became spectacles, blacklists appeared, and Americans in government, entertainment, academia and other professions discovered that........

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