Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (commonly referred to by its acronym RSS) is a Hindu nationalist organization that is the ideological mentor of a large number of loosely affiliated Hindu nationalist organizations in India referred to as the Sangh Parivar (or the RSS family). Among those organizations is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), currently India's largest opposition party and formerly a core group in the country's coalition government (1998–2004).

The RSS defines itself as a cultural organization whose prime goal is to train young men for service to the country. (There is a loosely aligned group for girls and women, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, about 1/10 the size of the RSS.) The RSS rejects the notion that it is a religious organization in the conventional sense in ...