{"id":14640,"date":"2015-12-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/12\/23\/rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh-shakha-spreads-its-wings-to-39-countries\/"},"modified":"2015-12-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T12:00:00","slug":"rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh-shakha-spreads-its-wings-to-39-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2015\/12\/23\/rashtriya-swayamsevak-sangh-shakha-spreads-its-wings-to-39-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Shakha Spreads Its Wings to 39 Countries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/Rashtriya-Swayamsevak-Sangh-shakha-spreads-its-wings-to-39-countries\/articleshow\/50260517.cms\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>MUMBAI, INDIA, December 21, 2015 (Times of India): USA is one of 39 countries where HSS runs shakhas, says Ramesh Subramaniam, Mumbai coordinator of RSS&#8217;s overseas work. He helped set up shakhas in Mauritius from 1996 to 2004 and now heads Sewa, a platform for overseas Indians to fund RSS service projects. He says HSS works closely with other Hindu cultural organizations abroad including the Chinmaya and Ramakrishna missions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t call it Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh overseas. It&#8217;s not on Indian soil so we can&#8217;t use the word Rashtriya. We call it Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh as it unites Hindus worldwide,&#8221; says Subramaniam, adding that RSS&#8217;s overseas wing is bigger than its affiliate, Vishwa Hindu Parishad. RSS is the ideological parent of nearly 40 official affiliates including VHP and India&#8217;s ruling party, BJP.<\/p>\n<p>The 39 countries where shakhas are held include five in the Middle East where outdoor shakhas are not permitted and are replaced by gatherings at people&#8217;s homes. Finland has only an e-shakha where activities are conducted via video-camera over the internet for people from over 20 countries living in areas where HSS units are absent. &#8220;The diaspora&#8217;s longing for a connection with Indian culture, history and traditions in a context in which they are a minority that is not represented in the mainstream, provides a ready social basis for the RSS,&#8221; says Subir Sinha, academician at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source MUMBAI, INDIA, December 21, 2015 (Times of India): USA is one of 39 countries where HSS runs shakhas, says,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}