NEW DELHI, May 12 (Reuters) – A powerful Hindu group from which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party emerged said on Tuesday it had organised foreign visits, including to the U.S., to counter perceptions it is a paramilitary outfit involved in attacks on minority communities.
The outreach by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National Volunteer Organisation, came after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a report, opens new tab in November that it “has been involved in acts of extreme violence and intolerance against members of minority groups for decades”.
The commission is a bipartisan body of the U.S. federal government that monitors religious freedom around the world and makes policy recommendations to the president, the secretary of state and the U.S. Congress.
Modi joined the RSS in his youth, and the rise of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to near-national dominance is widely attributed to the RSS’ vast network of volunteers, during a period marked by a hardening Hindu-Muslim political divide in the officially secular country where Hindus are a majority.
RSS BANNED SEVERAL TIMES
The RSS says it is a “Hindu centric civilisational, cultural movement” whose goal is to “carry the nation to the pinnacle of glory”, including by uniting Hindus and protecting the religion.
It has been banned several times since its inception in 1925, including after a former member assassinated independence hero Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
Indian opposition leaders, particularly Rahul Gandhi of the main opposition Congress party, have repeatedly accused the RSS of promoting a divisive, majoritarian ideology that he says threatens India’s secular fabric and fuels intolerance towards minorities.
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