Narendra Modi’s decades as an RSS pracharak before entering electoral politics make his relationship with the organisation as Prime Minister a subject of continuous public interest, one that has swung between visible closeness and reported friction. This article looks at what has actually been documented, rather than assumed, about that relationship since 2014.
The Institutional Relationship, Structurally
The RSS is formally a cultural and social organisation, not a political party, but it functions as BJP’s ideological parent body, providing cadre, organisational training, and grassroots infrastructure, including the shakha network discussed elsewhere in this category, that BJP’s own electoral machine has historically drawn on. This structural relationship predates Modi’s premiership by decades and continues regardless of any specific tension or warmth between individual leaders at any given time.
The 2024 Friction, as Reported
Following BJP’s reduced 2024 Lok Sabha tally of 240 seats, down from 303 in 2019, reports emerged, including in The Print’s coverage, of visible strain between the party and the RSS. BJP president J.P. Nadda had stated the previous year that the party had become “self-sufficient” and no longer needed RSS support to the same degree, a remark widely interpreted, per The Print’s reporting, as a signal of BJP’s confidence in its own independent organisational strength; the RSS, in turn, was reported to have responded with a comparatively cooler, less enthusiastic level of involvement in the 2024 national campaign than in prior election cycles, a dynamic some analysts directly linked to BJP’s underperformance relative to its own pre-election seat projections.
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The Course Correction After 2024
Following the 2024 result, reporting from The Week described the RSS as pushing for a “course correction” from BJP and Modi’s third-term government, including reportedly weighing in on considerations around the next BJP national president’s selection, a level of visible involvement in internal party matters that some commentators contrasted with the more independent posture Nadda had described the year before. The RSS subsequently became considerably more actively engaged in BJP’s subsequent state assembly election campaigns later in 2024, a shift The Print’s reporting connects directly to the party’s improved performance in those state contests compared to its national result months earlier.
The March 2025 Nagpur Visit
In a symbolically significant moment, Modi visited the RSS headquarters in Nagpur on March 30, 2025, to pay tribute at the memorial of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar on his birth anniversary, a visit that fell during the RSS’s own centennial year and coincided with Gudi Padwa, Maharashtra’s traditional new year. The Print’s coverage described Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat engaging in what was reported as casual, warm conversation during the visit, framing the moment as effectively “signalling a truce” after the prior year’s reported friction, with Modi additionally visiting the nearby Deekshabhoomi memorial and inaugurating an RSS-supported eye hospital during the same trip.
An Unusually Candid Characterisation
The Print’s reporting cited an unnamed BJP leader’s description of the post-2024 relationship dynamic as being like “father and son,” a characterisation suggesting the RSS had stepped back in to support BJP at a moment of genuine difficulty following the party’s reduced parliamentary mandate, an unusually candid internal framing of a relationship that both organisations have more typically preferred to describe publicly in warmer, less hierarchical terms.
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Modi’s Own Public Framing
Since the 2025 Nagpur visit, Modi has repeatedly and publicly credited the RSS with shaping his own political values, on multiple occasions describing the organisation as the source of his personal “service-driven philosophy,” according to The Print’s coverage, a consistent public framing that emphasises continuity and gratitude over any acknowledgment of the friction reported the previous year, consistent with the general pattern of Indian political leaders rarely confirming internal organisational tensions in public even when independent reporting documents them.
Why This Relationship Matters Beyond Personalities
Political analysts, including coverage in The Diplomat around the RSS’s 2025 centenary, have generally argued that the Modi-RSS relationship matters less as a story about two individuals and more as an indicator of the underlying health of BJP’s organisational machine, since the RSS’s cadre and shakha network remain a resource BJP’s own electoral operation continues to depend on regardless of any specific period of public distance, making the relationship’s actual on-the-ground state, rather than its public messaging, a genuinely consequential factor in the party’s continued electoral performance.
Bottom Line
Modi’s relationship with the RSS as Prime Minister has moved through a documented cycle of reported 2024 friction, tied to Nadda’s “self-sufficient” remark and BJP’s reduced Lok Sabha tally, followed by the RSS’s renewed and more visible involvement in the party’s subsequent state campaigns, and culminating publicly in Modi’s symbolically loaded March 2025 visit to the RSS’s Nagpur headquarters during its centennial year. Both organisations continue to publicly emphasise continuity and shared values, even as independent reporting has documented real, if temporary, strain in the relationship following the 2024 national result.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the Bharatiya Janata Party.
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