Why RSS and TJ Should be Brought into the Legal Fold

 By Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan

Why India's largest unregistered organizations should be brought into the legal fold

The problem in plain terms

Two of the most influential mass movements operating in India today share a curious trait: neither is formally registered as a legal entity. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925 and now the ideological parent of the Sangh Parivar, functions as what Indian tax law calls a "Body of Individuals" — not a registered society, trust, or company. Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), the transnational Islamic missionary movement founded two years later in 1927, is even less structured: it has no formal enrolment process, no official membership count, and operates through loosely organized preaching groups called jamaats.

Both organizations are enormous in scale. Both shape public life — one through ideological and political influence stretching into the ruling party, the other through religious revivalism reaching tens of millions across South Asia and beyond. And both have, at different points, found themselves at the centre of controversy — the RSS over its alleged role in communal violence, TJ over the 2020 Nizamuddin gathering that became a major COVID-19 super-spreader event. Neither controversy could be cleanly adjudicated in part because neither organization has a formal legal identity that can be held accountable in the way a registered society, trust, or company can.

The case for registration

1. Legal accountability follows legal personality. A registered society or trust is a "juristic person" — it can sue, be sued, hold property, and be held responsible for its actions as an institution. An unregistered body of individuals largely cannot. When harm occurs — a riot linked to a rally, a public health crisis linked to a congregation — victims and the state are left pursuing individuals rather than the organization that convened them, which lets the institution itself escape consequence even as it retains the loyalty, funding, and moral authority of a formal body.

2. Financial opacity invites suspicion, fair or not. Both organizations collect and move significant funds — the RSS through decentralized shakha-level contributions like "Guru Dakshina," TJ through self-financed member travel and informal collections. Without audited accounts filed under a regulatory framework, outsiders cannot verify claims made by supporters or critics alike about where the money goes. Formal registration under India's existing frameworks (the Societies Registration Act, the Trusts Act, or equivalent) would require disclosure that neither organization currently provides at the parent level.

3. Membership records enable, rather than restrict, both rights and responsibilities. Critics of registration frame membership rolls as surveillance. But formal records also protect individual members — establishing who was and wasn't present at a given event, who acted in an official capacity versus independently, and who can be legitimately associated with organizational decisions. Their absence currently cuts both ways: it shields the organization from institutional liability, but it also leaves individual members without a clear record distinguishing personal from organizational conduct.

4. Scale changes the calculus. A neighbourhood book club or a handful of friends organizing a picnic have no need for registration. An organization with a national or transnational footprint, running affiliated schools, trusts, and welfare networks, and capable of mobilizing millions, operates at a scale where the informal-association model starts to look like a loophole rather than a natural fit. The RSS's own affiliates — from the ABVP to Vidya Bharati — are separately registered; the parent body's continued informality looks increasingly anomalous relative to its own ecosystem.

5. Equal treatment matters. If registration is demanded of one large, socially influential organization, consistency requires applying the same standard to others of comparable scale — regardless of religious or ideological orientation. Singling out either the RSS or Tablighi Jamaat alone would rightly be seen as selective targeting; treating both under a uniform transparency standard is the only version of this argument that survives scrutiny.

The counterarguments — and they carry real weight

This is a genuinely contested question, and the case against mandatory registration is not fringe.

• No legal requirement exists. As Indian legal experts have pointed out amid the recent Karnataka controversy, Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution guarantees the right to form associations, and no statute compels every association to register. Advocates for the RSS's current status argue that demanding registration from an organization with "no profit motive" that primarily engages in community activity is itself a rights infringement, not a transparency measure.
• The precedent cuts every way. If the state can compel registration simply because an organization has become large or influential, the same logic could later be turned against any religious movement, cultural association, or activist network the government of the day finds inconvenient. Critics argue this makes "influence" rather than "legal violation" the trigger for state scrutiny — a genuinely dangerous standard in a democracy.
• Much of the ecosystem is already registered. Both movements' affiliated welfare, educational, and charitable arms — Sewa Bharati and Vidya Bharati on one side, various trusts and mosques associated with TJ activity on the other — already operate under existing regulatory frameworks, file accounts, and answer to law where money and property are involved. The argument that "the organization" escapes all accountability understates how much of its actual activity already sits inside the regulated system.
• Registration could burden legitimate religious practice differently than political activity. TJ in particular is explicitly apolitical and religious in character; treating a missionary movement's decentralized preaching structure identically to a socio-political organization's national hierarchy risks conflating categories that the law has historically kept separate for good reason — protecting religious practice from the kind of state oversight applied to political or commercial entities.

Henceforth, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can float an organization modeled on the RSS or TJ, solicit funds freely, and operate behind a veil of opacity. With no legal obligation to maintain formal membership records, such an organization can conveniently wash its hands of any member who strays into mischief or serious crime — disowning the individual while retaining the innocence of the institution. A dangerous precedent indeed, for it lets accountability evaporate exactly where it is most needed

Where this leaves the debate

The strongest version of the "no registration" argument is not that transparency doesn't matter, but that transparency should be pursued through existing law — enforcing disclosure where money, property, or harm is actually involved — rather than through a blanket registration mandate triggered by an organization's size or visibility. The strongest version of the "registration" argument is that when an organization operates at national or transnational scale, shapes public life, and has repeatedly found itself at the centre of serious controversy, the informality that once suited a small voluntary group starts to function as a shield rather than a natural feature of grassroots organizing.

Both sides agree on the underlying value — accountability. Where they part ways is on whether the current legal framework already delivers it, or whether scale itself creates an obligation the law hasn't yet caught up to.