Comment by Riaz Haq on March 20, 2019 at 7:40pm

Hindu Nationalism's roots in Fascism and Nazism: 


https://www.newsclick.in/why-jaitley-needs-study-link-between-rss-a...


Excerpts from Marzia Casolari’s article in the Economic & Political Weeklyillustrate the relationship between the RSS and the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.

Casolari writes, “The first Hindu nationalist who came in contact with the fascist regime and its dictator was B.S. Moonje, a politician strictly related to the RSS… Between February and March 1931… Moonje made a tour of Europe, which included a long stop-over in Italy. There he visited some important military schools and educational institutions. The highlight of the visit was the meeting with Mussolini.”

“The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people...India and particularly Hindu India need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus… Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived”, Moonje had written in his diary.

It is well known that M S Golwalkar, the second supreme leader of RSS, idolised the Holocaust and thought that it to be an effective way to deal with the minorities of India. In We or Our Nationhood Defined, he wrote,“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… 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 Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

Golwalkar’s treatment of minorities and foreigners in the ‘Hindu Rashtra’ bears striking resemblance to Hitler’s ways. The following paragraph from Golwalkar’s book highlights this resemblance. He writes, “It is worth bearing well in mind how these old Nations solve their minorities [sic] 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 [sic] 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.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 20, 2019 at 7:48pm

Moonje & Mussolini

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/moonje-amp-mussolini/art...

The first Hindu nationalist who came in contact with the fascist regime and its dictator was B.S. Moonje, a politician strictly related to the RSS. In fact, Moonje had been Hedgewar’s mentor, the two men were related by an intimate friendship.

Moonje’s declared intention to strengthen the RSS and to extend it as a nationwide organisation is well known. Between February and March 1931, on his return from the round table conference, Moonje made a tour of Europe, which included a long stop-over in Italy. There he visited some important military schools and educational institutions. The highlight of the visit was the meeting with Mussolini. An interesting account of the trip and the meeting is given in Moonje’s diary, and takes 13 pages (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), Moonje papers, microfilm, rn 1).

The Indian leader was in Rome during March 15 to 24, 1931. On March 19, in Rome, he visited, among others, the Military College, the Central Military School of Physical Education, the Fascist Academy of Physical Education, and, most important, the Balilla and Avanguardisti organisations. These two organisations, which he describes in more than two pages of his diary, were the keystone of the fascist system of indoctrination—rather than education—of the youths. Their structure is strikingly similar to that of the RSS. They recruited boys from the age of six, up to 18: the youths had to attend weekly meetings, where they practised physical exercises, received paramilitary training and performed drills and parades.

According to the literature promoted by the RSS and other Hindu fundamentalist organisations and parties, the structure of the RSS was the result of Hedgewar’s vision and work. However Moonje played a crucial role in moulding the RSS along Italian (fascist) lines. The deep impression left on Moonje by the vision of the fascist organisation is confirmed by his diary:

“The Balilla institutions and the conception of the whole organisation have appealed to me most, though there is still not discipline and organisation of high order. The whole idea is conceived by Mussolini for the military regeneration of Italy. Italians, by nature, appear ease-loving and non-martial like the Indians generally. They have cultivated, like Indians, the work of peace and neglected the cultivation of the art of war. Mussolini saw the essential weakness of his country and conceived the idea of the Balilla organisation.... Nothing better could have been conceived for the military organisation of Italy.... The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people.... India and particularly Hindu India need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus: so that the artificial distinction so much emphasised by the British of martial and non-martial classes amongst the Hindus may disappear. Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. I will spend the rest of my life in developing and extending this Institution of Dr Hedgewar all throughout the Maharashtra and other provinces.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 24, 2019 at 8:13pm

#Israel Consulate in #Mumbai #India Organizes Event on #Hindutva and #Zionism. The poster of the event flaunts images of Zionist leader Theodor Herzl and RSS leader VD Savarkar. #Modi #Kashmir https://indianculturalforum.in/2019/08/22/israel-consulate-in-mumba...

All masks are off and all veneers discarded- the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai along with one Indo-Israel Friendship Association is organising a public discussion on Hindutva and Zionism on August 26th, at the The Convocation Hall of University of Mumbai. The poster of the event flaunts images of Theodor Herzl and VD Savarkar, and the event has Subramanian Swamy and a professor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Gadi Taub as speakers. So far, Israel’s mission in India spoke the language of bringing technology and building cultural ties. Israel’s agencies, as part of its Brand Israel, have tried to whitewash its occupation, apartheid and settler-colonialism against Palestinians by hosting events, film festivals, etc, in an attempt to deflect attention from its crimes.

However, this time the ruling dispensation in India gives the Israeli embassy the confidence to drop all pretenses. All along, it is the connivance of these ideologies that has brought India and Israel closer in the last half a decade, at the cost of Indian solidarity to Palestine. In this context, we are sharing an excerpt from Sukumar Muralidharan’s essay “The ideological common ground between Hindutva and Zionism”, from the collection From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity edited by Githa Hariharan.

As Hindu nationalist ideology moves into its more extreme fringes, its inherent paradoxes stand out with similar starkness. Early pioneers of the ideology articulated these in the confident belief that minor doctrinal inconsistencies would be of no consequence in the mission of facing down a common enemy in Islam. As India under colonial rule lurched from the bitter aftermath of the collapse of the Khilafat agitation into an extended phase of communal estrangement, the notion of a country inhabited by two nations became widely accepted, crystallised especially in two political vehicles: the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). A text published in 1939 by M.S. Golwalkar, a year before he took over the leadership of the RSS, remains one of the most authoritative statements on Hindu nationalism, offering rich insights through its comments on contemporary world events into the ideological pantheon it drew sustenance from.

Golwalkar’s statements lauding Nazi Germany for its virulent manifestation of “race pride”, which led to the expulsion of the Jews despite the world recoiling in horror at the enormity of the deed, are widely cited. These offer eloquent testimony in themselves, but only tell the full story when juxtaposed with the observations on Zionism that the same text offers. Golwalkar identifies India as one among the early nations that afforded sanctuary to the Jews after their country passed into Roman tyranny. This was obviously a bond in his rather twisted historical imagination, which persisted into that moment in history when the greater dispersal of the Jews took place, with the “engines of destruction . . . under the name of Islam” being let loose in the land. Palestine, in Golwalkar’s sense, suffered much like India did, losing its culture and traditions on account of the intrusions of Islam “Palestine became Arab, a large number of Hebrews changed faith and culture and language and the Hebrew nation in Palestine died a natural death.” But hope was not lost, since “the attempt at rehabilitating Palestine with its ancient population of the Jews is nothing more than an effort to reconstruct the broken edifice and revitalise the practically dead Hebrew National life.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 2, 2019 at 10:42pm

Narendra Modi’s India
The Prime Minister’s Hindu-nationalist government has cast two hundred million Muslims as internal enemies.
By Dexter Filkins

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-nar...

“Modi was a fascist in every sense” - Ashis Nandy - a trained psychologist, wanting to study the mentality of Hindu nationalists, interviewed Modi when he was young.

In 1925, K. B. Hedgewar, a physician from central India, founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an organization dedicated to the idea that India was a Hindu nation, and that Hinduism’s followers were entitled to reign over minorities. Members of the R.S.S. believed that many Muslims were descended from Hindus who had been converted by force, and so their faith was of questionable authenticity. (The same thinking applied to Christians, who make up about two per cent of India’s population. Other major religions, including Buddhism and Sikhism, were considered more authentically Indian.)

Hedgewar was convinced that Hindu men had been emasculated by colonial domination, and he prescribed paramilitary training as an antidote. An admirer of European fascists, he borrowed their predilection for khaki uniforms, and, more important, their conviction that a group of highly disciplined men could transform a nation. He thought that Gandhi and Nehru, who had made efforts to protect the Muslim minority, were dangerous appeasers; the R.S.S. largely sat out the freedom struggle.

In January, 1948, soon after independence, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a former R.S.S. member and an avowed Hindu nationalist. The R.S.S. was temporarily banned and shunted to the fringes of public life, but the group gradually reëstablished itself. In 1975, amid civic disorder and economic stagnation, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended parliament and imposed emergency rule. The R.S.S. vigorously opposed her and her Congress Party allies. Many of its members were arrested, which helped legitimize the group as it reëntered the political mainstream.

The R.S.S.’s original base was higher-caste men, but, in order to grow, it had to widen its membership. Among the lower-caste recruits was an eight-year-old named Narendra Modi, from Vadnagar, a town in the state of Gujarat. Modi belonged to the low-ranking Ghanchi caste, whose members traditionally sell vegetable oil; Modi’s father ran a small tea shop near the train station, where his young son helped. When Modi was thirteen, his parents arranged for him to marry a local girl, but they cohabited only briefly, and he did not publicly acknowledge the relationship for many years. Modi soon left the marriage entirely and dedicated himself to the R.S.S. As a pracharak—the group’s term for its young, chaste foot soldiers—Modi started by cleaning the living quarters of senior members, but he rose quickly. In 1987, he moved to the R.S.S.’s political branch, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.

When Modi joined, the Party had only two seats in parliament. It needed an issue to attract sympathizers, and it found one in an obscure religious dispute. In the northern city of Ayodhya was a mosque, called Babri Masjid, built by the Mughal emperor Babur in 1528. After independence, locals placed Hindu idols inside the mosque and became convinced that it had been built on the former site of a Hindu temple. A legend grew that the god Ram—an avatar of Vishnu, often depicted with blue skin—had been born there.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 19, 2020 at 12:05pm

#Nazi era #German reminder to all those enabling #Modi's #Hindutva #Fascism in #India and elsewhere. #Hitler #Trump #Johnson

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/412129-when-all-this-is-over-peopl...

“When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.”

― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 19, 2020 at 12:05pm

#Nazi era #German reminder to all those enabling #Modi's #Hindutva #Fascism in #India and elsewhere. #Hitler #Trump #Johnson

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/412129-when-all-this-is-over-peopl...

“When all this is over, people will try to blame the Germans alone, and the Germans will try to blame the Nazis alone, and the Nazis will try to blame Hitler alone. They will make him bear the sins of the world. But it's not true. You suspected what was happening, and so did I. It was already too late over a year ago. I caused a reporter to lose his job because you told me to. He was deported. The day I did that I made my little contribution to civilization, the only one that matters.”

― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 7, 2020 at 8:58pm

Modi’s Philosopher
AN INTERVIEW WITH
VINAYAK CHATURVEDI
The far-right ideology of Hindutva has gained frightening currency under Indian leader Narendra Modi. But in order to combat it, we first have to understand Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — the man who originated the violent ideology.


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/10/vinayak-damodar-savarkar-chaturv...


Savarkar is a divisive figure in contemporary Indian politics. A founding thinker of the ideology of Hindutva, he is the intellectual forebear of the hardline nationalism that today animates the ruling BJP. At the same time, his promotion of violence and his virulent anti-Muslim views placed him at odds with much of the political establishment of post-independence India.

--------------------

The political reason for thinking about the project occurred to me when I was finishing my first book, which was centered on central Gujarat. This was the locality in which, in 2002, massive riots took place, which were described as “anti-Muslim pogroms.” Approximately 150,000 Muslims were displaced, an estimated 1–2,000 Muslims were killed, there were allegations of state involvement in the violence, and so on.

----------------------

Based on my first book, that formulation just seemed problematic. One of the things that I was underscoring in that book was that Gandhi was actually aware of the everyday forms of violence against certain low-caste groups by landed, privileged communities in Gujarat. So, for me, that was the beginning of thinking that there must be a different explanation for what was happening in Gujarat. It didn’t simply go from a nonviolent land to a violent land of Hindutva. And as I kept thinking about Hindutva more and more, I was constantly drawn back to Savarkar.

--------------

Violence is at the center of all of Savarkar’s writings — and, by extension, all his political work.

He argues that Hindus, dating back to antiquity or earlier, had a code of conduct for the uses of violence. When Hindus were confronted with an enemy that did not adhere to the code, they resorted to unethical modes of violence in seeking vengeance, or what he calls “super-savage cruelty.”

It is in this framing that Savarkar also writes about the need for assassinations and guerrilla warfare. Throughout his writings, there is a sense that Hindus were victimized by foreign invaders, and that Hindus were simply responding to unethical enemies. This is still the justification used by many supporters of Hindutva today.

However, in his seminal work, Essentials of Hindutva, there is a tension, as he points out, that, in fact, it was the original Hindus who were the first perpetrators of violence in the colonization of India. This is a point that is often not considered.

---------------

And how did this theory of violence translate in his political career?

VC
In thinking about Savarkar as a public figure, I argue that his public life is bookended by political assassinations. You have a figure like Madan Lal Dhingra, who assassinates a British official in London in 1909. Savarkar is his defender. To Nathuram Godse, who assassinates Gandhi in 1948 and who sees himself as a follower of Savarkar’s.

By all accounts, Dhingra saw himself as one of Savarkar’s disciples. While it is unclear whether Savarkar had been privy to the assassination or its planning, he provides a public defense of Dhingra, before Dhingra is executed by the state.

Savarkar was also implicated in transporting handguns to India, one of which was used to assassinate an official in western India. So, in 1910, he is arrested in London for sedition and a number of other charges, including the weapons charge.



---------------------

Godse saw himself as a disciple of Savarkar’s. Although at court he is very clear that Savarkar had no direct influence on him, didn’t instruct him to do anything, one of the requests that he has in prison is to read Savarkar’s speeches on Hindutva in order to write his rationale for killing Gandhi.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 7, 2020 at 9:03pm

Swatting is a new digital-age crime in the U.S. in which an anonymous caller reports a fake violent crime to the police that elicits the arrival of a militarised unit known as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team
As I was talking to my 84-year-old father on the telephone a couple of weeks ago, he said that someone was calling on the other line claiming to be the sheriff and asking some odd questions. The number was listed as ‘Private Caller’ and my father assumed it was a prank call. Then, in the background, I heard my mother say, “There are so many police outside!”

https://www.thehindu.com/society/annoy-the-alt-right-in-the-us-toda...

-----------------

My father said he would call me back, and opened the front door to find several policemen on the porch, pointing assault weapons at him. If he had not opened the door when he did, they would have broken it down. The sheriff’s office had received a message saying that someone had witnessed my mother shoot an individual with a shotgun on a Zoom call. The officers asked to search the house and realised it was a false report.

My parents had been ‘swatted’. Swatting is a new digital-age crime in the U.S. in which an anonymous caller reports a fake violent crime to the police that elicits the arrival of a militarised unit known as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. One of the deputies explained to my parents that this particular anonymous call had been made to Interpol in Europe, who had then contacted the State’s highway patrol, who contacted the sheriff’s office. The fact that my mother was named, and the exact home address provided, was unsettling to say the least.

-----------

There is a spectral nature to these events initiated by faceless, nameless, unseen perpetrators. It is certainly possible that they are simply acts of harassment in the U.S. of today. Perhaps these are the consequences of having identified Savarkar as the ‘ghost father’ of the nation in India. Yet this is paradoxical for me personally. I initially became interested in Savarkar after learning that I had been named after him by one of his disciples, who had given the name to hundreds of other boys.

I take Savarkar’s writings seriously, as he was one of the most important Indian political thinkers of the 20th century. I have argued that people should read Savarkar in India today, even if they fundamentally disagree with his ideas. It is only then that we can fully interpret Hindutva and the idea of India that he influenced and helped to shape. In the end, the harassment has all the traces of the invisible hand of the Right that is no longer interested in intellectual debate.

The writer is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and is writing an intellectual history of V.D. Savarkar.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 2, 2021 at 9:01am

Although experts have developed this popular narrative (from Eurasian Steppes) using archaeological, linguistic, zoological, botanical, geographical and theological evidence, some others have also been promoting a revisionist explanation called ‘Out of India’.

https://thewire.in/the-sciences/rakhigarhi-indus-valley-civilisatio...

The proponents of this alternate theory argue that the Harappan civilisation never collapsed but temporarily declined and was then revived in the form of a new cultural offshoot peopled by those who called themselves ‘Aryan’. This society was dominated by a sacerdotal class adept at chanting Sanskrit verses encoded in the much-revered Vedas. This view propagated the idea that this ‘indigenously developed’ culture, along with Sanskrit, also spread westwards at the same time.

How valid is this ‘Out of India’ argument? Is there any evidence to substantiate its theory of outward migration?

Subclade R1a1a

Older studies based on mitochondrial DNA studies tell a different story: that outward migration did not happen. Instead, they indicate that some of the social groups distributed in various parts of India share a common genetic ancestral lineage (designated haplogroup R1a1a) with eastern Europeans. The new archeogenetic papers suggest that haplogroup R1a1a mutated out of haplogroup R1a in the Eurasian Steppe about 14,000 years ago. Thus, these studies support the ‘Out of the East European Steppes’ theory. It follows from this that the original form of Indo-European languages was first spoken in eastern Europe, the ‘original’ homeland.

About 10,000 years ago, a portion of the people that shared the genomic subclade R1a1a left their homeland and moved east towards the Caspian grasslands, where they tamed horses, goats and dogs and learned to build horse-drawn chariots, essential for a nomadic life. Around 1,900 BC, these people broke up into three groups. One group proceeded westward, to Anatolia, part of the fertile crescent. The second moved into what is now western Mongolia. The third group migrated southwards, into a region known to the Greeks as Bacteria.

Subsequently, the third group divided into two subgroups: one moved into what is now Iran, and the other into India. Those who entered India, around 1,500 BC, established the dominant civilisation in western Punjab. By then, much of the older Harappan settlers had either become marginalised or had moved to the south and central India, and even to parts of Balochistan. The newly settled people, the so-called ‘Aryans’ themselves, were not builders like the Harappans but are likelier to have been better story-tellers.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 2, 2021 at 9:07am

They (Indian researchers Singh and Thangaraj) did not want to be part of a study that suggested a major West Eurasian incursion into India without being absolutely certain as to how the whole-genome data could be reconciled with their mitochondrial DNA findings. They also implied that the suggestion of a migration migration from West Eurasia would be politically explosive. They did not explicitly say this, but it had obvious overtones of the idea that migration from outside India had a transformative effect on the subcontinent. Singh and Thangaraj suggested the term “genetic sharing” to describe the relationship between West Eurasians and Indians, a formulation that could imply common descent from an ancestral population. However, we knew from our genetic studies that a real and profound mixture between two different populations had occurred and made a contribution to the ancestry of almost every Indian living today, while their suggestion left open the possibility that no mixture had happened. We came to a standstill. At the time I felt that we were being prevented by political considerations from revealing what we had found.

Reich, David. Who We Are and How We Got Here (pp. 159-160). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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