The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) completing 100 years is not merely an organizational milestone; it is a moment that demands serious reflection on how a fringe ideological movement transformed itself into the most powerful socio-political force in India. What began in 1925 as a cultural-volunteer outfit has evolved into a deeply entrenched ecosystem that permeates politics, education, labor, religion, media, and even foreign outreach. The infographic marking RSS’s centenary is revealing not because it celebrates growth, but because it unintentionally documents how Hindutva has been institutionalized—normalizing exclusion, majoritarianism, and ideological extremism within the Indian state and society.

The RSS was founded by K.B. Hedgewar with the explicit aim of reshaping Indian identity around an exclusivist Hindu nationalist vision. From the outset, it rejected India’s civilizational pluralism in favor of a homogenized Hindu Rashtra. Over a century, this vision has moved from the margins to the mainstream—not through electoral politics alone, but via systematic social engineering. The infographic’s depiction of RSS’s “main branches” is particularly telling. From the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in politics to ABVP in education, BMS and BKS among workers and farmers, Seva Bharati in social work, and international extensions like HSS, the RSS operates as a parallel state—unelected, unaccountable, yet omnipresent.

The numerical growth of RSS shakhas (local units) underscores this institutional penetration. From roughly 39,800 shakhas in 2010 to over 83,000 by 2025, the expansion is not organic civic engagement but structured ideological mobilization. These shakhas are not benign community clubs; they function as indoctrination hubs where loyalty to Hindutva supersedes constitutional values. The fact that nearly 60 percent of new recruits are aged between 20 and 35, and that around 60 percent of shakhas are now “student shakhas,” signals a deliberate strategy to capture India’s future generations before critical thinking can fully develop.

Geographically, the RSS’s strongest presence in states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala, and Gujarat mirrors regions that have witnessed heightened communal polarization, mob violence, and systematic marginalization of minorities. This correlation is not accidental. RSS ideology thrives where identity is weaponized, and grievance is cultivated. The normalization of vigilante violence—against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and dissenters—has been enabled by decades of ideological conditioning that frames minorities as internal enemies.

What makes the RSS uniquely dangerous is not just its street-level mobilization, but its success in embedding Hindutva within state institutions. The timeline in the infographic highlights critical junctures: the bans following Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the Emergency period, and the Babri Masjid demolition. Each crisis was followed not by introspection, but by resurgence. The demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 marked a decisive shift where mob violence became a political tool and religious majoritarianism a governing principle. Narendra Modi’s ascent to prime ministership in 2014—himself a lifelong RSS pracharak—completed this ideological takeover of the Indian state.

Since then, Hindutva has ceased to be merely an ideology; it has become policy. Citizenship laws discriminate on religious grounds, history textbooks are rewritten, academic freedom is curtailed, and dissent is equated with treason. The RSS’s long-term strategy—patient, decentralized, and relentless—has paid off. India’s constitutional promise of secularism remains formally intact, but substantively hollowed out.

The RSS claims to engage in “social work” and “nation-building,” yet its version of service is conditional and exclusionary. Welfare is filtered through ideological loyalty, while minorities are rendered perpetual outsiders. Internationally, RSS-linked networks export this worldview, lobbying foreign governments, influencing diaspora politics, and sanitizing India’s image abroad—even as democratic indices and human rights rankings steadily decline. The greatest danger posed by the RSS is not episodic violence, but the normalization of extremism. When majoritarian dominance becomes common sense, when vigilantes act with impunity, and when state power echoes ideological dogma, extremism no longer appears extreme—it becomes routine governance. This is how societies slide from democracy into ethnocracy, not overnight, but through a century of patient institutional capture.

At 100 years, the RSS stands not as a cultural organization but as the architect of a settled menace. Hindutva is no longer a mobilizing slogan; it is embedded in India’s laws, classrooms, police stations, and political discourse. The tragedy is that this transformation has occurred gradually enough to escape alarm within India, even as its consequences—social fragmentation, democratic erosion, and perpetual communal tension—become impossible to ignore. A century after its founding, the RSS has achieved what it always sought: not merely influence, but dominance. The cost, however, is an India increasingly at odds with its pluralistic soul—an extremist project disguised as national revival.