What Sardar Patel thought about the shadowy character of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is further reinforced in today’s India; as Union home minister, Patel had banned the RSS. Can Priyank Kharge, the home minister of Karnataka, live up to that powerful image of the Iron Man of India and make the RSS accountable again?Well, there is a striking difference between the two scenarios. In 1948, the RSS was another sundry organisation; though it had a reasonably high support base, it had no political heft. So when RSS was declared unlawful by Patel, no political party came forward to register their protest. In fact, most in the country cheered the decision.Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel, chief minister Adityanath and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat during a ceremony at the Ram Temple, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh on November 25, 2025. Photo: PMO via PTI.Today, in 2026, the RSS controls the government of India. It has installed its once errand boy, Narendra Modi, on the prime ministerial chair. All those of any consequence in the ruling dispensation today routinely declare their unfailing loyalty to the Sangh parivar. So banning the RSS is not a feasible idea. What needs to be done is to highlight the goings-on in the shadowy organisation. People of the country need to be reminded how Patel had fathomed the dubious character of this opaque set-up and had minced no words in saying so. Kharge must be complimented for helping initiate a discussion on the RSS’s murky past and its questionable present. Growing political clout has made RSS legally unfetteredThe RSS’s past was indeed murky; its anti-national character was self-evident to the freedom fighters of our country. While Gandhi’s millions were sacrificing their lives and livelihood to gain freedom from British rule, the RSS men were openly, unabashedly, acting as cheerleaders for the colonial masters.The British used the RSS to snoop down on the activists of the freedom movement. The Sangh had denounced Gandhi as an appeaser of Muslims and an enemy of Hindus.No wonder, when Mahatma was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a zealot anti-Muslim Hindu Mahasabha activist, the role of the RSS came under the lens. To escape retribution, then wily chief of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, issued a condolence message saying: “Shocked at this cruel fatal attack and tragic loss of (sic) greatest personality.”Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.That’s not all; to preempt any punitive action, Golwalkar sent messages to both Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and home minister Patel condemning the brutal assassination; in those messages, he used uncharacteristic superlatives for Gandhiji. Sample this: ‘Nathuram Godse is a thoughtless perverted soul who had committed the heinous act of putting a sudden and ghastly end to the life of poojya Mahatmaji by the bullet.’But Patel was not persuaded; he had seen through the dubious character of the RSS. That found expression in the government circular. The notification issued by the home ministry that banned the RSS three days after Gandhi’s assassination brought to light the sharp contrast between what the RSS professed and what it practised.The notification said: “The professed aims and objects of the RSS are to promote the physical, intellectual and moral well-being of the Hindus and also to foster feelings of brotherhood, love and service amongst them… The government has, however, noticed with regret that in practice members of the RSS have not adhered to their professed ideals. Undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried out by members of the Sangh who have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods.”The home ministry circular was categorical that all this had “made it incumbent on the government to deal with the Sangh in its corporate capacity.”Trainees of the ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’ (RSS) carry out a ‘Path Sanchalan’ march during the ‘Karyakarta Vikas Varga Dwitiya’, in Nagpur on Saturday, May 23, 2026. Photo: PTI.Nothing much has changed about the basic nature and the character of the RSS since then; the only difference is that during the last eight decades, the RSS has grown into a behemoth; its shadowy activities have multiplied manifold and its growing political clout has made it legally unfettered.RSS’s war chest is flush with foreign moneyKharge touched the raw nerve when he asked: where does the RSS get the funding from? A proper inquiry will yank the fig leaf away from the standard RSS response that all its income is sourced from guru dakshina of its members. Why must it not submit its statement of account to the government? The quotidian response has been that since it does not receive any institutional donations, foreign or domestic, it’s not legally bound to declare it to any authority.Also read: A Sarsanghchalak and a TycoonBut that should not cut ice. After all, the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which was banned by the government of India, rightly so, used to claim that it was funded by the contributions of its members and it was not accountable to any government authority as regards its finances. But the government of the day didn’t accept this facile explanation and rightly cracked down on it.The RSS is the flip side of the SIMI. If the latter indulged in vicious minority communalism, the former is the unvarnished flag-bearer of majority communalism. Why should it be kept at a different pedestal? Is it just because it masquerades majoritarianism as nationalism?We all know that SIMI was funded by anti-India forces of Pakistan. Similarly, there has been veritable evidence – provided by a slew of investigative reports – that the RSS has been garnering a lot of its resources from abroad, often from dodgy sources.RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat with Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla during the closing ceremony RSS Karyakarta Vikas Varg-II at Reshimbagh, in Nagpur, Maharashtra ON June 4, 2026. Photo: PTI.The South Asia Citizens Web, in an explosive report titled ‘The Foreign Exchange of Hate: IDRF and the American Funding of Hindutva’ in 2002 drew our attention to the funding of Hindutva operations in India. It focused on just one US organisation called India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), a Maryland-based US charity. The report provided documentary evidence as to how IDRF funds were disbursed to RSS-linked organisations whose primary work was religious ‘conversion’ and ‘Hinduisation’ in poor and remote tribal and rural areas of India.This report documented the case of one IDRF beneficiary, the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram in Gujarat, and its extensive involvement in anti-Christian violence including the physical destruction of Christian institutions — schools, colleges, churches and cemeteries.Further, the report stated: “Secondary documentation also exists to show that the same Hindutva organisations involved in anti-Christian violence of 1998-2000 were also involved in the Gujarat carnage of 2002 where, by most reliable accounts, more than 2000 people, mostly Muslims, were massacred.” It gave documented proof that the IDRF had sent more than $3 million to the RSS bodies between 1995 and 2002.RSS members during the closing ceremony of RSS Karyakarta Vikas Varg-II at Reshimbagh, in Nagpur, Maharashtra on June 4, 2026. Photo: PTI.Frontline in its July-2021 report ‘Sangh parivar’s US funds trail’ also gave exhaustive details on how large amounts of money flowed to the kitty of the RSS’s affiliated bodies from the US-based Hindu organisations.The same report also quoted from a report of a British group called Awaaz titled ‘In Bad Faith: British Charity and Hindu Extremism’. It revealed that the U.K. wing of Sewa International (an RSS-linked body) had raised millions of pounds under the garb of providing relief to the 2001 Gujarat earthquake victims. But funds were funnelled to RSS fronts. Lord Adam Patel, a then British Labour Party member and a Sewa patron, had castigated the organisation as racist after learning about its links with the RSS. Also read: The Money Question RSS Never Had to Answer: An Ex Insider’s ViewThe People’s Democracy, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) organ, in its January 2026 issue, published the findings of a combined research report of Paris-based Ceri-SciencesPo and Delhi-based Caravan magazine. It provided evidence that an outfit called Support a Child USA, affiliated to Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) USA, has been providing funding to RSS-supported organisations in India. In fact, the report referred to many foreign-based RSS affiliates collecting funds from donors in the country they were based in and channeling them to various RSS-linked outfits in India.Foreign funding – the mainstay for many large and small NGOs that routinely show the mirror to the government – has caused mayhem for these public-spirited organisations as the state has swooped down on them for ‘fomenting trouble with easy money’. But the Modi regime’s wariness of foreign-funded NGOs does not extend to the RSS.Come to think of it: the RSS’s war chest is flush with foreign money. And it’s obvious to everyone that the RSS uses its financial and organisational heft to wage nation-wide hate campaigns against the minorities. Isn’t it the right time to officially scrutinise the funding of the Saffron Brotherhood? N.R. Mohanty is a senior journalist and a former editor of Hindustan Times, Patna.