India’s Hindu RSS lobbies groups abroad to counter minority rights criticism
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 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.