Read the full report at: tr.ee/RSS

The RSS, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the Sangh for short, is one of the most influential non-government groups in the world. It’s also the mother organization behind the party currently governing India: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Yet, outside India, few know about the RSS, its agenda, and its ideas.

The RSS was founded in 1925 with the core mission of transforming India, a pluralistic society, into a majoritarian Hindu nation-state, marginalizing non-Hindu minority groups, including Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Dalits, and Adivasis (Indigenous Peoples).

The RSS is not merely a cultural or religious organization. It is a century-old paramilitary brotherhood, the ideological and organizational parent of a vast network of groups collectively known as the Sangh Parivar. This includes the BJP, which has ruled India since 2014. Prominent in the RSS family are the following organizations operating world-wide: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP – World Hindu Council), Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), Sewa International, India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) and Coalition of Hindus of North America (COHNA). For decades, the RSS has propagated right wing Hindu nationalist ideology, resulting in communal polarization and open hostility towards India’s religious minorities.

RSS’s sophisticated and opaque transnational network of organizations operates worldwide and harvest funds under the guise of charitable donations, while evading accountability, including, but not limited to, the provisions of the Income Tax Act, as detailed below. Prime Minister Modi called the RSS “the world’s largest NGO” and a global database, housed at Sciences Po’s Center for International Research (CERI), Seeing the Sangh, described its family of organizations as “the largest far-right network in history.” RSS’s highly decentralized global structure with thousands of local “fronts” operates opaque funding pipelines. These pipelines allow capital, corporate donations and community charity funds to move across international borders with minimal regulatory oversight, obscuring the ultimate destination and use of the funds.

We have tracked the money flow of several RSS-affiliated organizations in Canada. While many are non-profits and therefore are not required to disclose their financial records, we identified 11 affiliated organizations with 21 registered Canadian charities. Overall, we found approximately $46 million moving between RSS-affiliated organizations in Canada. Additionally, these Canadian, RSS-affiliated organizations also sent over $21.5 million to other RSS-linked groups outside of Canada.

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