Mumbai: Last month, a day after Karnataka home minister Priyank Kharge wrote to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to “register itself”, Bhagwat mounted his defence.“There are so many unregistered things going on…the Hindu religion is not registered, many things are not registered,” he said at an event in Kerala the day after.Turns out, Bhagwat was being economical with the truth.The Wire, using data collated by ‘Seeing The Sangh’, the first-ever data set that maps the Sangh and its affiliates globally, has found a contradiction in Bhagwat’s statement. While the RSS has refused to register, it has silently got most of its global affiliates to do so. That means that while RSS affiliates have subjected themselves to the laws of many jurisdictions here and abroad, their parent body refuses to do so in India. There has been no explanation for why its standards for registration differ across national boundaries and organisations.The dataset, housed by the CERI-Sciences Po in Paris and published and hosted by The Caravan magazine, found that the Sangh’s network spans 38 countries outside India, and includes 2,502 distinct organisations in these countries, all of whom bear allegiance to and were “tightly networked parts of one large entity” – the RSS.But an analysis of the dataset by The Wire found that over two-thirds of the Sangh’s affiliates outside India are registered, adhering to foreign laws and policies around such outfits.Of the total 2,502 RSS-affiliated outfits that the dataset mapped in India and abroad, only 747 were unregistered, which means that over 70% of the outfits chose to register themselves as per local laws.But if India-based RSS affiliates were to be kept out, the number rises to over 79%. This, in effect, means that nearly eight out of 10 RSS global affiliates chose to register, and submit to regulations that govern their functioning, even though the RSS being the parent organisation refuses to submit itself to such rules.All these Sangh affiliates are registered in various ways – some are private companies, a few are advocacy/lobbying outfits. Many of them are non-government organisations or non-profits.The Wire sent two emails to RSS’s Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh Sunil Ambekar for his comments, but did not get a response.Speaking from the Red Fort on Independence Day in 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called the RSS “the world’s largest NGO, with a century-long history of devotion”. In 2010, it had about 40,000 shakhas across the country. By April 2014, just before Modi came to power, the number had inched up to 44,000 shakhas, in over 29,000 locations. By March this year, the RSS announced that it now had “doubled” that number, and over 88,000 shakhas were held in 55,000 locations across the country.Yet, it faces none of the scrutiny that other NGOs in India are subject to – from auditing their accounts and maintaining detailed donor records, to strict rules on how they spend their funds.Many who have tracked the RSS closely believe this reluctance comes from wanting to evade accountability.“The RSS has always tried to control and dictate the flow and directions of programmes through affiliated organisations, but not on its own,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, journalist and author who has closely tracked the rise of the Hindu right-wing since the 1980s. He added the RSS’s belief in not making itself a formal entity was only strengthened after it was banned following its role in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.“The RSS’s gut feeling would have been to not be formally registered on paper, because if something like this happens again, then they would become responsible for it.”Different rules for different countriesSangh insiders have conceded the close-knit network of the RSS and its entities.RSS ideologue and author Ratan Sharda had highlighted this in a 2025 piece for the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser: “For RSS, samanvay or harmonious co-ordination within and with organisations allied with it is a serious business, and that is the secret of the harmonious existence of this large Hindu Undivided Family.”Yet, the RSS’s refusal to submit itself to the law is at odds with how its affiliates behave beyond India’s borders.As per the dataset, outside of India, the Sangh’s largest presence is found in the United States, where there were 107 Sangh-affiliated outfits found.They were linked to the Sangh in various ways – from those having direct links, like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad-America, which functions as the American wing of the VHP in India, registered as a society, to others which have implied links like outfits that have co-hosted events and programmes with known Sangh affiliates, or have received funds from them.But, of these 107 Sangh affiliates, only 10 were unregistered. The remaining 97 were registered under various provisions of the American system.These registrations mean that the remaining 97 Sangh affiliates have to make their tax records public as tax-exempt non-profits or advocacy groups operating in the US.The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), which calls itself ideological “inspired” by the RSS and whose members have claimed that the HSS and the RSS were “the same”, has registered itself as a tax-exempt non-profit in the US. As a result, its tax filings – as well as the compensation it gives its employees – are public, for all to scrutinise.The HSS has frequently courted controversy for its activities: in 2021, organisers of ‘Dismantle Hindutva’, an academic conference discussing Hindu nationalism, reported receiving death threats after organisations including the HSS campaigned against the conference, demanding that it be called off. In 2014, a sting operation by a British news channel at an HSS-organised students’ camp had found a teacher delivering anti-Muslim and anti-Christian remarks in front of students.This level of scrutiny is not possible with the RSS in India, since it isn’t registered.Similar is the case in the UK, where the dataset found 26 Sangh-affiliated organisations. Of these, only three were unregistered. The rest, like the Hindu Forum of Britain – which the dataset found was co-hosting events with other Sangh affiliates and even conducted joint programmes with them – were registered and hence, forced to make their annual balance sheets public and update any change in company structure on the British government’s website.According to Rohit Chopra, Professor of Communication at the Santa Clara University in California, whose research has focused on Hindu nationalist outfits, Sangh affiliates choose to register abroad for strategic reasons.“By registering, these Sangh affiliates make themselves eligible to be able to raise money from big American corporations,” Chopra said. This money, he said, often gets passed onto Sangh affiliates in India.Chopra said the Sangh affiliates were “terrified” of violating laws abroad. “Unlike in India, the systems abroad to tackle money laundering are very strict. These outfits are terrified and apprehensive of running afoul of laws here,” he added.In 2002, a group called ‘The Campaign To Stop Funding Hate’ had found that American Sangh affiliates had funneled more than $3 million to India-based Sangh affiliates. In 2014, a report by an online South Asian Citizen Web (SACW) alleged that Sangh-linked charities in the US had sent more than Rs 2,800 crore ($30 million) to RSS-affiliated organisations between 2001 and 2012.While RSS-linked entities in countries outside India are predominantly registered – only 54 of the total 257 global Sangh affiliates are unregistered – in India, they behave somewhat differently.Of the total 2,240 Sangh affiliates in the country, a staggering 693 entities are unregistered. This means one in every three RSS-linked Hindutva outfits don’t exist on paper, and yet, continue to have presence on the ground.According to the dataset, the list of unregistered Sangh outfits include prominent organisations like the Bajrang Dal, the VHP’s youth outfit formed in 1984 that routinely organises events where anti-Muslim hate speeches ring, and whose members have been frequently found to be instrumental in anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence.Evidence points to frequent money flows between these affiliates and, sometimes, even with the Sangh.For instance, the RSS managed to construct its Rs 150 crore-worth headquarters in New Delhi, inaugurated in 2025, by routing the donations through an affiliated-organisation, the Shree Keshav Smarak Samiti (SKSS), which is registered as a trust, reporting by The Caravan showed. The international president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Alok Kumar, also in the news for the Ram temple donation scandal, recently said that RSS owned no building in the country other than Nagpur, and that people are building and leaving them for the RSS to use.During COVID-19, at least five Hindutva outfits in the US received over Rs 8.40 crore ($833,000) from US authorities as COVID-19 relief funding. These five outfits – Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA, Infinity Foundation, Sewa International and Hindu American Foundation – feature in the dataset as RSS affiliates and also fund other RSS affiliates, in turn, Al Jazeera had reported.Different NGOs, different rulesThe RSS was banned in the wake of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, then again during the 1970s, and has been cited in several inquiry reports as having been involved in cases of communal conflagration over the years, more specifically since 1961. But it has grown in strength over the years, especially after the BJP first formed a coalition government at the Centre in 1998. Service rules of government servants that disallowed association with the Sangh and organisations like the RSS and the Jamat-e-Islami have been amended to RSS’s advantage after Narendra Modi took office in 2014.VHP international president Alok Kumar, defending the Sangh’s refusal to register, cited the principle of mutuality, which allows for members-only clubs to avoid taxes for contributions raised by members.“The RSS practices guru dakshina once every year. It doesn’t take money from any outsider,” Kumar said in an interview to ANI. “The income from the guru dakshina becomes the income for that particular shakha where it was donated. The Income Tax department had, in 1967-68 and 1975-76, ordered that the RSS income be taxed and, in both cases, the high court said that guru dakshina income cannot be judged,” Kumar added.“Kharge should show a law where it makes it mandatory for all organisations to register themselves. There can be no specific arrangement or law that can be cited to show that the RSS needs to necessarily register itself,” he said.But a financial accountability expert, based in New Delhi, and author of several books on the subject, said this did not hold. The expert requested anonymity for the fear of retribution.“For the RSS to benefit from the principle of mutuality, it would have to declare its list of members and demonstrate that it receives money only from those members,” the expert said. “It also needs to demonstrate that its work does not go beyond these members, which is clearly not the case,” the expert added. The expert insisted that the RSS should have been registered as an NGO, since “their activities were like an NGO’s.”All registered NGOs in India need to file returns, and retain detailed records of its donors – from their name, address to even their PAN details. NGOs also need to, at any point, maintain their financial records for at least ten years. Recent changes in rules under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 notified on June 22 have made control of NGOs even more stringent. However, the Sangh is not obligated to maintain any of these records. The Sangh has to follow none of these guidelines.In contrast, the RSS’s lack of transparency around its donors could run afoul of the stringent FCRA provisions if it was found that the receiving organisations didn’t have FCRA licenses.“Leave alone fund transfers, but since the Sangh doesn’t make its donations public, how do we know if foreign nationals visiting India aren’t donating to it in cash?,” the financial accountability expert said.D.R. Goyal, scholar and former RSS-insider, in his now landmark book Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, cites RSS leader K.R. Malkani who edited Organiser for nearly half a century as saying RSS is “meta-political” and is “some kind of an institutional Rajguru”, wanting to deliberately be fully immersed into politics but not accountable.Secrecy is central to the Sangh’s functioning, said Subhash Gatade, veteran journalist and author of several books on the RSS and Hindutva.“This strategy – to establish ‘affiliated’ organisations – was something the RSS employed from the very start,” he said, pointing to the founding of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti in 1936, widely known as the RSS’s women’s wing, as a separate autonomous organisation. “It was the first such ‘affiliated’ organisation of the RSS, because they did not want to own their work,” Gatade added.While it is well known and admitted by the BJP that the Centre ‘briefs’ the RSS on its functioning and it has representatives attached to all ministries and to embassies abroad, the fact that it is unregistered helps to keep its real role unaccountable. It campaigns for the BJP, but the costs of the campaign are not part of the BJP’s filings with the Election Commission. RSS has often said it does not have a membership roster, or names of members.This is something that helped it wriggle out of the charge that Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse remained a member of the RSS. Registering would take the invisibility cloak away, say analysts. The RSS had claimed that Godse had left the RSS. However, recent investigations by author D.N. Jha revealed this to be untrue. “Not having a membership list makes it easy for the RSS to deny affiliations with such people,” Gatade, the author-journalist, said. “It did the same even when Swami Aseemanand, an RSS pracharak, confessed to his involvement in terror attacks.”Others, like Chopra, said the RSS’ refusal to register is a result of its ‘learnings’ from such episodes.“Violence has been central to the Hindu nationalist project,” Chopra, from Santa Clara University said. “If you are a registered organisation, it becomes easier for the State to target you. But when you aren’t registered, your members are not identifiable and you can’t be held responsible for their actions.”“Which is why, the RSS is everywhere and nowhere,” he added.Kunal Purohit is an independent journalist.