1947
RefugeesPunjab and Delhi
Partition refugees
Swayamsevaks ran relief camps and helped Hindu and Sikh families fleeing West Punjab and Sindh reach safety in India.
RSS's own accountOrganiser, Dec 2016 ↗
A century of shakhas, schools, service projects and relief in India and abroad, in the numbers the Sangh, its affiliates and the Government of India have put on record. Tap any figure for its source.
daily shakhas, meeting at 55,683 locations across India, according to figures released in March 2026 during the centenary year. Source: RSS figures reported by Organiser, 18 Mar 2026
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20 crises, from Partition to the pandemic, where swayamsevaks and Sangh-inspired groups such as Sewa Bharati and Sewa International stepped in. Each entry says who reported it, so you can judge the source yourself.
Swayamsevaks ran relief camps and helped Hindu and Sikh families fleeing West Punjab and Sindh reach safety in India.
When the dam failed and over 2,000 people died, RSS cadres were deployed to carry out relief across the whole region, delivering supplies to victims for months.
With the government response slow, RSS cadres were among the first to reach the injured in Bhuj and carry them to the field hospital at the Jubilee grounds.
About 3,300 swayamsevaks worked in Tamil Nadu. Medical camps treated over 7,000 people, volunteers helped give 2,475 victims their last rites, and supplies went to the Andaman Islands.
Sewa Bharati rebuilt homes for flood-hit families, handing over the first 77 houses in October 2010 out of 515 planned for the village.
Swayamsevaks ran rescue and relief in the Himalayan floods. Photos of that 2013 relief work are genuine; fact-checkers confirmed them when they were later recirculated.
An RSS-backed relief committee moved over 5,000 people to safety before landfall, sheltered about 7,000, fed more than 4,000 and cleared 16 blocked roads.
Volunteers supplied food and sent doctors to villages. Sewa Bharati planned 2,000 solar lights and 5,000 school kits, and with Mata Amritanandamayi Math moved to adopt about 60 flood-hit villages.
About 1,000 workers in 50 teams reached remote areas other agencies could not, distributed food, blankets and tarpaulins, and a Kathmandu helpline reconnected over 6,000 people with their families.
Seva Bharati ran relief and later counselling for flood victims, followed by phased rehabilitation work in the city.
Sewa International led the Indian-American response: 800 to 1,250 volunteers a day, about 1,000 hot meals a day for shelters, roughly 500 flooded homes cleaned, and about 247 newly arrived Indian students evacuated.
Swayamsevaks worked in all affected districts. Seva Bharati ran 26 relief camps in Alappuzha, and volunteers pumped out water and cleaned homes and wells in Wayanad.
2,04,190 RSS workers ran relief at 25,924 places in the first weeks of the lockdown, reaching 25,61,391 people, with about 2,000 doctors and medical students helping.
Sewa International, based in Houston, airlifted a first batch of 2,184 oxygen concentrators to India when hospitals ran short.
Sewa International ran a helpline that over 4,000 stranded students registered with. Sewa Europe and the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh worked in 10 Ukrainian cities and bussed students towards the border.
Sewa International Houston gathered and shipped more than 200 boxes of relief material for survivors.
Over 1,000 RSS and ABVP volunteers joined rescue work and came forward to help survivors after one of India's worst rail accidents.
Swayamsevaks worked alongside frontline rescue workers to help flood victims.
Swayamsevaks and Sewa Bharati joined the rescue, and Sewa Bharati has since handed over new homes to displaced families, part of a pledge to rehabilitate 12 families.
Sewa Bharati sent 15 water tankers a day to three settlements of displaced families, serving about 2,000 people.
A word of caution: old photos of RSS relief work are often reshared with the wrong date or place, and fact-checkers flag them, as with the Cyclone Fani and Wayanad cases. Share the documented record above rather than unverified images.