Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)

Vishva Hindu Parishad was founded on 29 August 1964 in Mumbai at a meeting convened by RSS leader M.S. Golwalkar, the Hindu seer Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati, and others, with the express purpose of coordinating Hindu religious leaders into the Sangh Parivar's political project. The VHP became the second-most-important Sangh Parivar organisation after the RSS itself, alongside the BJP (political wing, founded 1980), the Bajrang Dal (youth militia wing, founded 1984), and various other affiliates.

The most-significant single VHP campaign is the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that culminated in the December 6 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. The VHP mobilised approximately 150,000 kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) at the disputed site; the demolition was carried out by kar sevaks with VHP / Bajrang Dal coordination; the resulting nationwide Hindu-Muslim communal violence killed approximately 2,000 people (the Mumbai riots of December 1992–January 1993 and the March 1993 Mumbai bombings were direct consequences). The Liberhan Commission report (formally submitted 2009 after a 17-year investigation) named VHP leaders L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, and others as having played coordinating roles. The post-Babri criminal proceedings in CBI Special Court Lucknow continued until 2020, when all 32 named accused (including the surviving VHP leaders) were acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence — a verdict criticised by legal observers as politically influenced.

The VHP's post-2014 role (in the era of the Modi-led BJP central government, 2014–present) includes: organising the August 5 2020 Ram Mandir bhumi pujan (foundation-stone ceremony) for the Ayodhya temple to be built on the demolished mosque site; coordinating opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Act protests 2019–2020; mobilising for various 'love jihad' anti-Muslim political campaigns 2020–2024; and continuing the long-running ghar wapsi ('homecoming') reconversion campaigns against Christian and Muslim Indians. Multiple state and central-government investigations have documented periodic VHP / Bajrang Dal involvement in communal violence (Gujarat 2002, Kandhamal 2008, Muzaffarnagar 2013). The organisation operates a substantial international footprint serving Hindu diaspora communities — VHP America (founded 1970), VHP UK, and approximately 80 country chapters.

The CLCI 21 (High band, lower end) score reflects the documented coordinating role in major communal-violence episodes, the doctrinal in-group/out-group binary against Muslims and Christians, and the dispensing-of-existence framing in 'love jihad' and similar campaigns — while remaining lower than truly Extreme entries because VHP operates as a political-religious advocacy organisation rather than a high-control cult-of-organisation with members subject to severance enforcement.