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In June this year, Mohan Bhagwat offered many reasons for refuting demands that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) be registered.
The sarsanghachalak—supreme leader—of the RSS argued that it is only a “body of individuals”; that the government already knows it exists because it has been banned multiple times since its inception; and that “Hindu Dharma is not registered” either. Bhagwat also said that the RSS did not need to be legally registered because only “those who seek funds from the government require registration”. The Sangh has long claimed that it has no such requirement. In its telling, it sustains itself on the tax-free contributions that volunteers make as gurudakshina—offerings to a teacher.
But the RSS’s financial trail is opaque. The amounts it receives through the gurudakshina system are not publicly disclosed. Apart from this, a vast network of registered and unregistered organisations affiliated to the Sangh rely on various funding channels, some of which include foreign sources. How these funds circulate through the sprawling ecosystem is largely unknown.
What is clear, however, is that at least some of the registered Sangh-affiliated organisations are raising funds through government sources.
A TNM investigation reveals that the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)—one of India’s top Public Sector Undertakings—donated Rs 670.97 crore to 20 Sangh-linked organisations, starting from 2013. Of the total amount, a little less than three crores was given to three of the 20 organisations between 2013 and 2015. The rest of the funds were disbursed over the ten years that followed.
ONGC made these contributions from its Corporate Social Responsibility funds, through which it gives hundreds of crores to various organisations every year.
From the first quarter of 2015 until the first quarter of 2025, ONGC donated Rs 4,531 crore to over 2,000 organisations and projects across India, its CSR annual reports show. Of this amount, a little over 14.7% or Rs 668.01 crore, went to the 20 organisations that TNM identified as having links to the RSS. The main findings of this investigation do not include Sangh-linked organisations that received less than Rs one crore from the PSU.
The 20 organisations that TNM identified fall into three broad categories: nine are directly affiliated to the Sangh, nine were either started by or are led by individuals with ties to the RSS, and two have worked with the Sangh.
We identified a majority of these RSS-linked beneficiaries by mapping them to ‘Seeing the Sangh.’ This is the world’s first comprehensive map of over 2,500 organisations affiliated to the Sangh, which was released in late-2025. The database was compiled by a research team led by Dr Felix Pal, a political science and international relations lecturer at the University of Western Australia. It has been fact-checked by The Caravan; and is hosted by the French University Science Po’s Centre of International Studies.
ONGC did not respond to TNM’s multiple requests for comment.
Among the 20-RSS linked organisations that we identified, the biggest beneficiary of ONGC’s CSR contributions is Swargadew Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital, a 300-bed multi-speciality hospital in Assam’s Sivasagar district.
