No Proof To Support Viral Note About RSS Was Issued by British Home Department

There is no evidence to support the claim that the British Home Department issued this statement about the RSS.

A fake image is being shared to falsely claim that the British Home Department said that the RSS did not participate in "anti-British movements."

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

An image bearing the name 'British Home Department' and a couple of emblems on it is being shared on social media, where users have claimed that it shows their statement about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) involvement in India's freedom struggle.

What it reads: The document carries the statement, "RSS did not participate in any anti-British movement from 1925 to 1947."

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: There is no evidence to support the claim that Britain's Home Department ever issued a statement of this kind.

• Additionally, the emblem and coat of arms used in the image do not match any of the actual symbols used by the United Kingdom (UK).

How do we know?: We used several methods to verify the veracity of the image and the statement it carries.

Firstly, we noticed that the image carried faint text reading '1978' and a long signature starting with the letter 'M' and containing multiple letter 'T's.

We noted two details here.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

If we assume that the letter was issued in 1978, the signature would not fit the timeline of events as the Home Secretary at the time was Merlyn Reese, whose name is much shorter than the two-word signature in the claim.

Reese's term was from 1976-1979.

(Source: Parliament.uk/Screenshot)

We also noticed that the image in question carried two versions of Britain's coat of arms with slightly garbled or gibberish text.

Both coats of arms don't carry clear lettering.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

What about the statement?: To verify the statement, we ran a basic keyword search on Google to look for credible or official sources sharing this information.

• However, we only found this statement being shared on social media platforms, with posts being shared only in August 2025.

• Next, we went through the website of the UK's National Archives, using its search feature to comb through text and images.

• It had documents related to the British Home Department which went as far back as the year 1951. However, none of them were issued with a coat of arms like the image in the claim.

• We then looked for images related to the Home Department which dated back to 1879, but did not find any documents which carried single statements and emblems.

• For our final search here, we looked for any documents mentioning RSS, but did not find a single result relevant to this report.

They have no records of the Indian RSS.

(Source: National Archives/Screenshot)

Conclusion: There is no evidence to support the claim that the UK ever issued a statement saying that the RSS was not involved in any "anti-British movement."

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