INTERESTING: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat says there should be a dialogue with Gen Z, says the protestors are not ‘anti national’, an Andolan is legitimate as long as it is within the law. Says the grievances are ‘genuine’. Just days ago, another RSS functionary called CJP’s movement ‘anti-national’ and ‘anti Constitution’. So who does one believe? 🙏

The RSS does not exist! Yes you read that right. One of the country's most powerful organizations is not even legally registered in any state. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS, shapes public sentiment, governments, classrooms, and public life in India, but interestingly it has no legal registration. Just recently, the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said Sangh is not registered under any law because it is simply a body of individuals. He argued that it began in 1925 under British rule, so registration was not at all necessary back then. And according to him, the government did not make it compulsory to register after independence, and the RSS has continued its work within framework of the law for nearly a century. Addressing concerns about its finances, Bhagwat said the Income Tax Department and the courts have already examined the matter, noting that the RSS is legally classified as a body of individuals—a status that exempts it from paying income tax. But that very status also shields it from very valid public scrutiny. RSS has no registered membership list, no mandatory income statement, and no annual audits. Yet, it operates on a scale few institutions can match, with more than 80,000 local shakhas, hundreds of affiliated schools, charities, and publishing houses, and a ₹150 crore headquarters in Delhi. So then the question is how does an unregistered organization own land worth crores, raise funds, and even run national programs? They do it through a web of registered fronts, including temple trusts, welfare societies, and cultural NGOs. Money and assets move through those affiliates while the core organization stays legally invisible. There is no single entity to question, no clear paper trail to follow. This particular loophole once even helped the Sangh deny that Nathuram Godse, Gandhi's assassin, was ever a member. There was literally no official membership records to prove it legally. Being unregistered doesn't make an organization untouchable, but in practice, it shields the RSS from the kind of transparency required by a charity or a company. If there is no legal entity, who is accountable for the money it collects, the land it holds, and the influence it exercises? The RSS has used terms conveniently over the decades. At times it calls itself cultural, at some other times educational, sometimes charitable, now just a 'body of individuals'. But the RSS's reach today goes far beyond cultural work. It extends deep into the very machinery of Modi's governance. A hundred years later, the RSS has indeed mastered something rare: how to be powerful without paperwork, visible without scrutiny, and central to governance without being formally answerable to the public. The RSS is everywhere, and yet officially, it does not exist at all.