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http://www.secularindia.com/44new.htm
Marketing Fascism As Hindutva
Shamsul Islam
The former Prime Minister and socialist leader, Chandra Shekhar,
while participating in the debate over Gujarat violence in Lok
Sabha on April 30, 2002, said, "Parliamentary democracy
appears to have reached its nadir. The Nazis also similarly
misused Parliament." He was specifically referring to the
fascist outburst in the House of Ms. Uma Bharati, Union Minister
and a storm trooper of RSS since early 1990s. He said Uma Bharati’s
speech reminded him of the manner in which Hitler and his
troopers manipulated the German Parliament. He seemed quite
prophetic when he said, "This type of language will be
calamitous for the health of the nation. It resembles a speech by
a Nazi volunteer rather than a Hindu sanyasin. You are
deliberately playing into the hands of those who want to fracture
nation". Uma Bharati while reacting to these comments of
Chandra Shekhar said, "If Chandra Shekhar compares me to
Nazis it means he does not understand either the Nazis or
me".
It should surprise nobody that RSS and Fascism-Nazism have old
fraternal ties. In fact, any student of Indian Politics,
specially of communal politics, knows the historically close ties
which bind Uma Bharati’s RSS and totalitarianism of German
and Italian varieties. Can Uma Bharati and her tribe deny the
facts with which archives of RSS must be full?
RSS was the brain child of K.B. Hedgewar, V.D. Savarkar and B.S.
Moonje. All of them, including M.S. Golwalkar who became chief
(sarsanghchalak) of RSS after Hedgewar, were great fans of
Fascism and Nazism. The Italian researcher of Indian politics,
Marzia Casolari (‘Hindutva’s Foreign tie-up in the
1930s — Archival Evidence’) has done pioneer work in
tracing the fraternal links between RSS founders on the one hand
and Fascism and Nazism on the other. "The existence of
direct contacts between the representatives of the (Italian)
fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists
demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an
abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism. The
interest of Indian Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini
must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity,
confined to a few individuals; rather, it should be considered as
the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists,
especially in Maharashtra, focussed on Italian dictatorship and
its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example of
conservative revolution"
Moonje had a personal audience with Mussolini on March 19, 1931
at 3 p.m., in Palazzo Venzia, the headquarters of the Fascist
government. The meeting has been recorded in the diary on March
20 in the following words: "I shook hands with him saying
that I am Dr Moonje. He knew everything about me and appeared to
be closely, following the events of the Indian struggle for
freedom…Signor Mussolini asked me if I have visited the
University. I said I am interested in the military training of
boys and have been visiting the Military Schools of England,
France and Germany. I have now come to Italy for the same purpose
and I am very grateful to say that the Foreign Office and the War
Office have made good arrangements for my visiting these schools.
I just saw this morning and afternoon the Balilla and the Fascist
Organisations and I was much impressed. Italy needs them for her
development and prosperity. I do not see anything objectionable
though I have been frequently reading in the newspapers not very
friendly criticisms about them and about your Excellency also.
‘Signor Mussolini: What is your opinion about them?’
‘Dr Moonje: Your Excellency, I am much impressed. Every
aspiring and growing Nation needs such organisations.’
‘Signor Mussolini – who appeared very pleased –
said – Thanks but yours is an uphill task. However I wish
you every success in return.’ Saying this he got up and I
also got up to take his leave."
Once Moonje was back in India, he kept the promise made in his
diary and started immediately to work for the foundation of his
military school and for the militant reorganisation of Hindu
society in Maharashtra. He openly made reference to the Italian
and German examples: "In fact, leaders should imitate the
youth movements of Germany and the Balilla and Fascist
organisations of Italy. I think they are eminently suited for
introduction in India, adapting them to suit the special
conditions. I have been very much impressed by these movements
and I have seen their activities with my own eyes in all
details".
On March 31, 1934 Moonje, Hedgewar and others had a meeting, the
subject of which was again the military organisation of the
Hindus, along Italian and German lines. Moonje told the
gathering: "I have thought out a scheme based on Hindu Dharm
Shashtra which provides for standardisation of Hinduism
throughout India... But the point is that this ideal cannot be
brought to effect unless we have our own swaraj with a Hindu as a
dictator like Shivaji of old or Mussolini or Hitler of the
present day in Italy or Germany." Moonje also wrote Preface
to ‘The Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and its
Military School’ where he declared: "This training is
meant for qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing
masses of men with the ambition of winning victory with the best
possible causalities (sic) of dead and wounded while causing the
utmost possible to the adversary". One can see how this
‘mantra’ was meticulously applied in the cleansing of
Muslims in Gujarat recently.
The other great mentor of RSS, V.D. Savarkar also had great
liking for Hitler’s Nazism and fascism of Mussolini. While
delivering the Presidential address to the 22nd Session of Hindu
Mahasabha in 1940 at Madura he said, "There is no reason to
suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off
as a Nazi or Churchill is a demi-God because he calls himself a
Democrat. Nazism proved undeniably the saviour of Germany under
the set of circumstances Germany was placed in…"
S avarkar had chided Nehru for opposing Fascism and Nazism in
India. According to him, "Who are we to dictate to Germany,
Japan or Russia or Italy to choose a particular form of policy of
government simply because we woo it out of academical attraction?
Surely Hitler knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits
Germany best. The very fact that Germany or Italy has so
wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at
the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that
those political "isms" were the most congenial tonics
their health demanded". Savarkar had supported Hitler’s
anti–Jewish pogroms and on October 14, 1938, he suggested
the following solution for the Muslim problem in India: "A
Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews
do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out from
Germany".
M.S. Golwalkar, ideologue of RSS who came to head the
organization after Hedgewar, naturally, inherited love for
Fascism and Nazism from his seniors. He continued to idealize the
Nazi cultural nationalism of Hitler, which was nothing else but
‘ethnic cleansing’, in the following words (from We Or
our Nationhood Defined), "German Race pride has now become
the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its
culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of
the Semitic Races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has
been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh
impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going
to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good
lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by".
Golwalkar unhesitatingly wanted to model his Hindu Rashtra on
Hitler’s totalitarian and fascist pattern as is clear from
the following words of his in the same book: "It is worth
bearing well in mind how these old Nations solve their minorities
problem. They do not undertake to recognize any separate element
in their polity. Emigrants have to get themselves naturally
assimilated in the principal mass of the population, the National
Race, by adopting its culture and language and sharing in its
aspirations, by losing all consciousness of their separate
existence, forgetting their foreign origin. If they do not do so,
they live merely as outsiders, bound by all the codes and
conventions of the Nation, at the sufferance of the Nation and
deserving no special protection, far less any privilege or
rights. There are only two courses open to the foreign elements,
either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its
culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may
allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of
the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities
problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That
alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. That alone
keeps the nation safe from the danger of a cancer developing into
its body politic of the creation of a state within a state. From
this stand point, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old
nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the
Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in
reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the
glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu
nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the
Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to
the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far
less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights.
There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt.
We are an old nation: let us deal, as old nations ought to and do
deal, with the foreign races who have chosen to live in our
country".
Are you listening, great sanyasin, Umaji?