Century-old and Unaccountable: The Case for Registering the RSS

India's most powerful civil organisation cloaks itself in informality. A democracy that tolerates such opacity from an entity of such influence is only asking for trouble.

HYDERABAD  ·  Jun 18, 2026

There is a reliable Indian tradition of powerful organisations invoking ancient precedent to escape modern accountability. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which celebrated its centenary last year, has mastered this art. Asked why it remains unregistered under any Indian law, its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, replied with a question of his own: should the RSS have registered with the British, against whom its founder was fighting? The rhetorical flair is admirable. The logic is embarrassing. India has been a sovereign republic for 77 years. That is a long time to forget to fill out the paperwork.

The RSS occupies a position in Indian public life without parallel. It claims millions of participants, operates tens of thousands of daily "shakhas" — morning drills — across the country, and sits at the apex of an ecosystem that includes the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the country's largest trade union, student federations, tribal welfare bodies and educational institutions. It is, in short, the connective tissue of the Indian right. And yet it exists, in legal terms, as little more than a "body of individuals" — a status established not by any act of parliament but by tax appellate rulings in Bombay and Patna half a century ago. No membership register. No audited accounts. No annual report filed with the state. No property in its own name.

"No membership register. No audited accounts. No annual report filed with the state. No property in its own name."

The RSS and its defenders offer three lines of argument. First, that registration is not mandatory under Indian law — which is correct. Second, that courts have recognised its legal existence — which is also true, in the limited context of tax exemptions. Third, that its many affiliate bodies are themselves registered and therefore accountable — which raises more questions than it answers. Together, these arguments prove only that the RSS is not illegal. They say nothing whatsoever about whether it ought to continue as it is.

The accountability gap

The distinction matters enormously. Legality is a floor, not a ceiling. Democracies routinely ask more of institutions that wield significant public influence than the minimum the law requires. Political parties must disclose donors above a threshold. Publicly listed companies must publish accounts. Hospitals and universities must submit to inspections. The RSS, which has a stronger claim to shaping the character of the Indian state than almost any entity other than the government itself, operates beneath all such scrutiny. That is not admirable self-effacement. It is a structural failure of accountability.

The financial architecture of the RSS is, by design, opaque. When the organisation needs to own property — as it did with its recently inaugurated Delhi headquarters — it routes ownership through separate registered trusts. When affiliates raise money, they do so in their own names. The RSS itself, technically, has no funds to account for, no assets to disclose and no officers legally obliged to answer for anything. Whether this arrangement is a principled philosophical choice, as RSS historians maintain, or a convenient arrangement for avoiding scrutiny, the practical effect is the same: one of the world's largest civil organisations cannot be audited in any meaningful sense.

The RSS functionary who boasted to The Indian Express that "on paper RSS has no office" and that workers cannot be arrested because no membership is documented perhaps intended to illustrate organisational resilience. He unwittingly made the accountability critic's case instead. An organisation that has, as a deliberate design principle, ensured it leaves no documentary trail is not practising a philosophy of decentralisation. It is practising a philosophy of imperviousness.

History as an excuse

The historical argument — that the RSS adopted informality as a survival strategy after bans in 1948, 1975 and 1992 — carries genuine weight as explanation. As justification for the present, it is considerably weaker. The bans were lifted. The organisation survived. The threat from a hostile state, to whatever extent it was once credible, is difficult to sustain as an argument today, when the RSS's political arm governs from New Delhi and holds power in a majority of Indian states. The very success of the RSS project makes its claim to vulnerability faintly absurd.

"The very success of the RSS project makes its claim to vulnerability faintly absurd."

What were once understandable adaptations to a hostile environment have calcified into institutional habits that now serve different purposes: insulation from legal challenge, freedom from financial disclosure and the maintenance of plausible deniability on matters of direction and control. The question of who ultimately authorises the flow of resources through the broader Sangh ecosystem — from the RSS to its affiliates, from its affiliates to political beneficiaries — is one that no existing regulatory framework can answer. That ought to alarm anyone who cares about the integrity of Indian democracy, regardless of their views on the RSS's politics.

A question of democratic norms

India has wrestled for years with the question of money in politics. Electoral bonds were introduced, challenged, litigated and ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court. The funding of political parties, which are registered entities with at least nominal disclosure requirements, remains a matter of fierce public debate. The funding of the RSS, which is not a political party but exercises influence over political outcomes that most parties can only dream of, faces no comparable scrutiny because there is no comparable framework through which scrutiny could be applied. That asymmetry is difficult to defend.

The counter-argument, frequently made by RSS sympathisers, is that many religious and social bodies in India operate informally and that singling out the RSS is politically motivated. There is partial truth in this. India does have an uneven landscape of institutional accountability, and the motivations of those pressing the question are not always disinterested. But the answer to selective enforcement is broader enforcement, not continued exemption. And the RSS is not merely any informal association. It is one that has, by any reasonable measure, a greater bearing on the governance of the country than most formal institutions put together.

What registration would mean

A registered RSS need not be a diminished one. Registration does not constrain purpose; it creates legal identity. A registered body can own property, enter contracts and operate bank accounts in its own name — conveniences the RSS currently routes around through elaborate structural workarounds. More importantly, registration would require the production of annual accounts, submission to audit, and public disclosure of governance structures. None of this would prevent the RSS from running its shakhas, training its pracharaks, or influencing its affiliates. It would simply make the doing of those things legible to the society the RSS claims to serve.

Parliament could act without waiting for courts. A simple amendment extending mandatory registration to organisations above a certain scale of membership or financial activity — defined by metrics such as the number of regular meeting locations, affiliated bodies or declared participants — would capture the RSS without appearing to target it. The same rule would apply to any organisation of comparable reach, including those on the left of the political spectrum. The principle is straightforward: the larger the footprint, the greater the obligation to account for it.

The RSS turns 101 this year. It has outlasted British rule, survived three bans, and watched its alumni ascend to the highest offices of the republic. It has, by any reckoning, earned its place in Indian history. What it has not earned is a permanent exemption from the standards of transparency that a functioning democracy asks of powerful institutions. A century of existence is an argument for confidence, not for continued concealment. The RSS should register — not because the law compels it to, but because an organisation that genuinely serves the nation should have nothing to hide from it.