The controversy generated by the letter of Karnataka home minister, Priyank Kharge, addressed to Mohan Bhagwat, sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) could not have come at a worse time for the organisation.At the first plane, the RSS has been weathering over recent months an unprecedented escalation in international scrutiny with the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the bipartisan US advisory body explicitly recommending that the US government impose targeted sanctions – such as asset freezes and travel bans – on the RSS as an organisation.On the second plane, the RSS is navigating its way through two major, simultaneous controversies that challenge its institutional autonomy as well as moral authority.RSS on the back foot at the worst timeFirstly, Kharge’s letter forces the RSS into defensive over questions raised over its legal status and financial probity in a historical context. This has opened the doors for opposition leaders and opinion makers, to frame no-nonsense questions over the organisation’s funding, taxation and legal framework.The more RSS leaders try to dismiss Kharge’s queries as politically motivated, the more they will be perceived by people as a group that has something to hide.The RSS has historically provided no details ever on issues related to its legal status, accountability, financial transparency, public order, permissions, and sources of funding and compliance with the constitution and laws of India.Secondly, while Kharge’s missive raises troubling questions for the RSS in the legal and political realm, the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to form a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) – comprising top IAS, IPS, and finance officials to probe allegations that over Rs 200 crore being siphoned off from Ram temple donations, strikes at the heart of the cultural and emotional capital of the Hindutva movement.Also read: ‘In a Country Where Even a Street Vendor Must Register, How Can RSS Be Exempted?’: Priyank KhargeThis is the worst time for the RSS to get embroiled in multiple controversies because the organisation is currently celebrating its centenary year.Over the last couple of years as the watershed anniversary neared, the RSS and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar began projecting it as a mature, universally accepted cultural and reformist bedrock of modern India which was both socially indispensable and unifying for Hindus, and those from other faiths, willing to be assimilated within the majority community.Instead of using the centenary year as an occasion to erase all doubts, questions and reservations about its character, the RSS is being forced to extricate itself from allegations and debates over its “unregistered status”. So far it appears that the RSS has no answer to why the organisation functions as an opaque body, avoiding regulations which are binding for citizens and NGOs.It has to be recalled that the Ram Janmabhoomi Andolan was the primary vehicle to catapult the Sangh Parivar, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from the political periphery to becoming the principal party of governance over the past twelve years.With political power seized in 2014, the Parivar further ploughed the construction of the Ram Mandir, with Bhagwat being present on every key occasion alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Projected as the culmination of a decades-long spiritual and political struggle led by the Sangh Parivar, the campaign and the temple’s construction motivated millions of ordinary citizens to contribute hard-earned money, gold, and silver as acts of pure devotion.RSS members during the closing ceremony of RSS Karyakarta Vikas Varg-II at Reshimbagh, in Nagpur, Maharashtra on June 4, 2026. Photo: PTI.Allegations of siphoning, embezzlement, and replacing genuine ornaments with fakes, wound the sentiments of the core constituency.In the backdrop of the RSS donning the role of ‘ultimate deliverer’ whose moral compass was unshakeable, Kharge’s letter points to a jarring paradox.The RSS and its affiliates back state authority and call for citizens to perform their civic duties while remaining within the framework of law and order.Contrastingly, Kharge’s letter depicts the organisation as one that has chosen to be outside those very regulatory structures it expects ordinary citizens, NGOs, and civil society groups to strictly follow.Kharge’s letter also underscores RSS’s duplicity and this has basis in its annual reports, tabled and available publically. In these reports, the RSS shares details about its strength – number of shakhas, public rallies and other events besides mass mobilisation drives of the RSS.Despite such massive presence across the length and breadth of the country, the RSS still remains officially non-existent. Such lack of formal information effectively insulates its top leadership from direct legal liability for actions carried out in its name on the ground.A false equivalenceEven during the pre-independence era, the RSS steered clear of any anti-imperialistic activity and its relationship with the colonial state was a calculated game of monitoring of its activities and administrative compliance.Post-independence, the government banned the RSS in the immediate aftermath of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel explicitly demanded structural and legal clarity on the RSS before considering lifting the ban.In response to the state’s direct intervention, the RSS drafted its first formal written constitution in 1949. It also explicitly stated its allegiance to the Indian constitution, which was sought by the Union government as a condition for the organisation to legally operate again.Very peculiarly, while the tradition of Guru Dakshina remains much vaunted, the RSS still remains without a central institutional bank account or direct property ownership under its own name. This organisational decision makes the organisation financially opaque.This sadly remains the reality despite the RSS being asked directly “where the money comes from” and “what the RSS is legally classified as” by the government of India’s revenue departments. But these queries came to naught and the RSS remained a phantom figure as far as official documents were concerned.Quite clearly, although the RSS operates through thousands of smaller, legal and locally registered affiliate trusts (handling schools, lands, and offices etc.), keeping the core mother outfit outside standard financial auditing mechanisms, enables its leaders to exert massive influence over public policy and politics without the rigorous, centralised financial disclosures required of political parties or major NGOs.Yet, Prime Minister Modi in his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort in 2025 declared the RSS as the “world’s largest NGO.”In his first non-official retort to Kharge, Bhagwat contended that “Hindu Dharma is not registered“— and also labelled the Karnataka home minister’s critique a “political gimmick.”Undeniably, the RSS chief drew a false equivalence with a decentralised religious tradition, not just to make a point that will hoodwink no one, but the faithful, but also to tide past a legitimate constitutional question that Kharge raised.BJP believes in two sets of rules and regulationsIt must also be stated that asking a large and influential powerhouse to make public its character and organisational details, is certainly not a political gimmick, but an effort to secure transparency that institutions are expected to maintain towards the citizens they profess to serve.The RSS consistently claims ‘unnecessity’ in providing accounting and administrative details. As against this, hordes of civil society organisations, from research institutions to public intervention organisations – have not just come under tighter scrutiny since 2014, but their functioning also has been made extremely tough.Besides tightening laws and regulations (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act or FCRA for instance) for NGOs, human rights groups, research bodies and independent digital media, many have had their bank accounts frozen, leading to their slow death.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Quite clearly, the BJP has shown that it believes in two sets of rules and regulations – one for conventional civil society organisations and other for the nation’s most powerful ideological movement.Having tracked the Sangh Parivar since it established political stranglehold over India, it is evident that the RSS has chosen a functionally fragmented structure for the political edifice because its leaders from the outset aimed to avoid political accountability.When the Bajrang Dal was established in the mid 1980s, it was essentially ploy to ensure that the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad too could not be held accountable for the rabid outfit’s actions in the course of the Ram temple agitation.Within the Sangh Parivar, from the 1950s onwards the system of regular samanvay baithaks (an annual three-day summit hosted by the RSS) is well known. The Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the political predecessor of the BJP attended such conclaves.After its formation, in April 1980, the BJP chose to skip these sessions only to revive its participation after L.K. Advani assumed the party presidency in 1986.This has continued in the Modi era too, although frequency of such meetings has declined. But there have also been far greater informal and one-on-one parleys during this period.Is RSS apolitical as it claims?Globally renowned social scientist, Christophe Jaffrelot dubbed the RSS as a key architect behind India’s transition into a de-facto “deeper state”. Ideological objectives of the RSS are achieved not just by its ideological progeny, the BJP, but due to efforts of a much wider network of individuals and institutions which are embedded with key individuals drawn from the RSS.Through its multiple affiliates, all coordinated by designated office-bearers or functionaries of the RSS, the organisation monoculturises society. Against the grain of India’s constitutional principles, the RSS presides over the efforts to replace the nation’s inherent pluralism with a highly standardised, centralised version of identity and history.From left to right: BJP president Amit Shah, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Illustration credit: parliamentarian.inThe RSS claim of being a ‘cultural organisation’ has been one of the most intensely debated subjects in modern Indian politics. Despite its tall claims, the RSS influence permeates India’s political, social, and policy landscapes, leading most analysts to disregard its claims.Although Article 4 of the RSS constitution (adopted only after its framing was made a condition of lifting the ban on the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination) states that it “has no politics and is devoted to purely cultural work”. It is common knowledge that this was merely a smokescreen.The RSS itself does not contest elections, hold political office, or field candidates but many of its pracharaks and swayamsevaks campaign for specific candidates, principally of the BJP. The same section in the RSS constitution also permits swayamsevaks to join “any political party”The RSS is the clear organisational patriarch of a parivar and politics rubs onto it, even by virtue of affiliates like BJP, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and numerous others who are more directly ‘in politics’.Despite this, the RSS position is calculated and it casts politics solely in electoral terms. Even though the RSS has an opinion on a large number of political developments, it portrays itself as apolitical. This is what Kharge’s letter seek to expose.By staying away from state scrutiny, even though the nature and scope of its functioning warrants such examination, the RSS can make not just adversaries dysfunctional, but even those who tread the middle ground where independent and non-ideological civic-critique, as in Kharge’s letter, can function and flourish.Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay is a journalist and author whose books include Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times and The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right.