Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it “the world’s largest NGO.” A global database describes its family of organizations as “the largest far-right network in history.” Yet, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological-organizational parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), remains an unregistered entity a hundred years after it was established.
The RSS is neither a trust nor a non-profit. It is not a legal entity and, hence, is free from financial and other scrutiny.
Recently, the Congress, India’s main opposition party, launched a series of attacks on the RSS for its unregistered status. However, the RSS top brass made it clear that they have no intention of registering the organization, as Indian laws do not mandate registration of every association.
The debate around the RSS’s lack of registration is decades old. It resurfaced last year, when it emerged that the RSS had appointed a lobbyist in the United States and spent $330,000 on it.
In June this year, Priyank Kharge, who is the home minister in the Congress-run southern state of Karnataka, revived the issue by demanding that the RSS register itself as an organization, disclose its funding, finances, office-bearers, and operations, and operate with greater transparency. “In a country where even a street vendor must register, temples and Gods must account for every donation received and citizens must file tax returns, how can RSS be exempted?” he asked.
He challenged the RSS to point to the law that exempts them.
The demand carries political weight, as Priyank is not just another Congress minister; he is the son of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
However, the RSS has always maintained that it is a “body of individuals” that does not need to register and pay taxes. RSS helmsman Mohan Bhagwat pointed out that they had fought legal battles earlier when the Income Tax department asked them to pay taxes, but they secured a court ruling in their favor.
The RSS heads the Sangh Parivar, an umbrella grouping of organizations that espouse Hindutva. It is a centrally guided, decentralized but interconnected network of ideologically cohesive organizations. The RSS has no formal membership. Anyone who attends the shakha (the basic unit) is a swayamsevak (volunteer). Shakha gatherings usually involve physical exercises, games, discussions, prayers to the ‘motherland’ and homage to the Bhagwa Dhwaj, the RSS’ saffron flag, for an hour daily.
RSS claims it earns from the gurudakshina (offerings to the guru or teacher) that swayamsevaks offer before a saffron flag on the auspicious occasion of Guru Purnima at the shakha. The donation is given in closed envelopes. Only the shakha’s mukhya sikshak, karyavah and gata-nayak, the three usual office-bearers of a shakha, get to know what donations came.
It is, indeed, not mandatory for every organization to be registered. For example, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), India’s oldest surviving human rights organization, founded in 1972, remains unregistered. It has branches in almost every district of the eastern state of West Bengal, India’s fourth-most populous state, where it is based.
“We did not register because APDR was founded as an anti-establishment organization meant to question the State, power and authority,” said Ranjit Sur, an APDR veteran. According to him, registration requires annual reporting not only of financial details but also of all activity. “We knew the government could cancel our registration any moment even if we registered,” Sur told The Diplomat.
Due to the lack of registration, the bank account in the name of APDR was frozen by the authorities in 2020, and the organization was denied a space at the Kolkata International Book Fair last year.
The advantage of the RSS is that it has dozens of affiliated and associated organizations that can use their registration for events or occasions where necessary. Many RSS-affiliated organizations register as trusts/societies and claim exemptions under Sections 11/12 of the Income Tax Act for charitable purposes. They operate in the fields of politics, education, religious mobilization, morality, sports, trade and economy, and social service.
For example, what’s widely called the “RSS headquarters” in New Delhi, India’s national capital, is owned by the Shri Keshav Smarak Samiti, a registered society named after the RSS founder. Once a two-storey building, the RSS’ new headquarters, which was inaugurated last year, now has 300 rooms in three 13-storey towers that sprawl over 3.75 acres.
The five-yearly gathering of swayamsevaks from around the world, formally called Vishwa Sangh Sibir, has been conducted by different affiliates such as the New Delhi-based registered entities, Shri Vishwa Niketan (SVN) and Antar Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad (ASRP) and the Mumbai-based Vishwa Adhyayan Kendra (VAK).
Questions relating to the unregistered status of the RSS appear to be more political/ethical than legal. Those who demand its registration call for accountability, considering its massive size and influence. Most of the ministers in the Modi government as well as in different BJP-ruled state governments are swayamsevaks.
From the RSS perspective, the question seems strategic. It has kept its organizational structure fluid so that parts of the organization always remain outside the ambit of bans, if any are imposed on them, an RSS veteran, who did not want to be named, told this author. There are properties belonging to the RSS family registered in the names of individuals, he said.
“The RSS prefers trust-based functioning over paperwork-based operations, perhaps because they faced bans twice, once immediately after independence (in 1948) and then during the Emergency (1975),” political scientist Sibaji Pratim Basu told The Diplomat. A brotherly trust, thanks to ideological cohesion and conviction, allows them to have assets registered in the names of trusted individuals rather than in the name of the organization, he pointed out.
Last year, a database, Seeing the Sangh, led by academics Christophe Jaffrelot and Felix Pal, mapped over 2,500 organizations tied to the RSS. Of them, 2,240 are in India and 167 abroad. “Why has the size, shape and nature of this network never been empirically investigated till date?” Pal asked in an essay, and answered, “Well, because the Sangh is invested in keeping it that way.”
Understandably, the Sangh Parivar operates in a semi-secret mode because its aims and objectives include turning India into a Hindu state, not only in practice but also by changing the constitution. They have been repeatedly accused of trampling the constitution’s secular-inclusive values, vigilantism targeting religious minority groups such as Muslims and Christians, and low-caste Hindus, religious conversion, manipulation of history with a communal and divisive agenda, imposing their preferred food and enforcing changes in tribal culture, among other things.
Meanwhile, Priyank Kharge’s efforts to get the RSS to register faced a legal jolt later in June, when a court in Karnataka pointed out that the definition of “person,” as per Section 2(26) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita (BNS), expressly includes “any company or association or body of persons, whether incorporated or not.”
The court said that “the statute does not prescribe any requirement of formal membership, registration, incorporation, or documentary proof of affiliation as a condition precedent for recognizing a body of persons under the law.”
The nature of RSS membership has emerged at the heart of the case. There can be little doubt that different political interest groups will closely monitor its progress.
