Why India’s RSS is lobbying the West amid attacks on minorities at home
Key takeaways
- Hate speech against religious minorities in India rose last year.
- Here is more about the RSS, and what’s behind the visits to Western nations.
- The RSS is a right-wing Hindu volunteer organisation founded in 1925 by physician and Hindu nationalist Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in Nagpur, modern-day Maharashtra.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Hate speech against religious minorities in India rose last year. Experts say far-right RSS is doing ‘damage control’.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Dattatreya Hosabale, general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), speaks to foreign media at the RSS office in New Delhi, India, on May 12, 2026 [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]By Sarah Shamim Published On 15 May 202615 May 2026India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the Hindu far right, says it is organising visits to the United States and other Western countries to bolster its public image globally and dispel claims it is involved in violence against religious minority groups in India.
The visits announced on Tuesday come amid international criticism regarding minority rights in India and a few months after a US federal agency published a report accusing the group of carrying out acts of violence against minorities for decades.