The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) concluded its centenary celebrations on Dussehra, 20 October. At home, the year-long jamboree saw a national outreach covering 4.61 lakh villages and 10 crore urban households (as claimed in its annual report 2025-26) and the release of a commemorative postage stamp and a 100-rupee coin.

Overseas bhakts were graced by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s flying visits as he addressed diaspora in the US, UK and Canada on the organisation’s humanitarian non-communal agenda. The converted needed no convincing and the sceptics stayed sceptical.

Undoubtedly stronger, wealthier and politically more influential than ever before, the centenary year hasn’t been an unmitigated bed of roses for the RSS. The Gen Z protests in June as well as the countrywide protests against vote chori (theft) by the BJP in collusion with the Election Commission caught it off-guard. Speaking in Mumbai in August, Bhagwat praised the inherent patriotism of “our very own youth” protesting at Jantar Mantar. In his Vijaya Dashami speech, the same youth were described as emotional, misguided and misled by foreign powers.

Bhagwat, who not only enjoys Z-category security but was also ranked as the fourth most powerful Indian by The Indian Express in 2025, met hostile demonstrations abroad and a barrage of hard questions at home. The Congress government in Karnataka served a notice to the RSS to clarify its legal status and furnish details of membership and funding. Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi sustained a no-holds-barred attack, calling the RSS ‘a bunch of jokers’ and an ‘anti-Constitutional all-male cult’.

While the jury is still out on whether the choice of Nitin Nabin as BJP’s national president was dictated by the party or the RSS, the loss of the Bankipur Assembly seat in Bihar, that too in the centenary year, has grated on both. (The seat vacated by Nabin has been a BJP stronghold since 1995.)

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