Adolf Hitler | SabrangIndia News Related to Human Rights Fri, 24 Jan 2020 11:10:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png Adolf Hitler | SabrangIndia 32 32 Punjab CM sends ‘Mein Kampf’ copy to SAD Chief to show implications of CAA https://sabrangindia.in/punjab-cm-sends-mein-kampf-copy-sad-chief-show-implications-caa/ Fri, 24 Jan 2020 11:10:42 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2020/01/24/punjab-cm-sends-mein-kampf-copy-sad-chief-show-implications-caa/ Amarinder Singh said that the Centre was trying to replicate “Hitler’s agenda” in India

The post Punjab CM sends ‘Mein Kampf’ copy to SAD Chief to show implications of CAA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
amrinder

Punjab chief Minister, Amarinder Singh, sent a copy of Hitler’s autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’ to Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Chief Sukhbir Singh Badal to enlighten him about the dangerous implications of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The book ‘Mein Kampf’ (meaning My Struggle) is an autobiographical account of Hitler’s journey to developing his political ideology, his anti-semetism and future plans for Germany.

Amarinder Singh said that the Centre was trying to replicate “Hitler’s agenda” in India and that SAD leaders should read the book before giving “irrational reactions” on the CAA. He further said that the SAD leader’s recent statement reflects their ignorance on the issue asked Badal to read the book to decide whether country comes first or “political expediency”.https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif

Singh wrote a letter to Badal saying, “Supporting the bill in both houses of Parliament and in the Vidhan Sabha and opposing it on other platforms is unbecoming of a political leader”.

In his letter Singh explained Hitler’s modus operandi which led to persecution of the intellectuals, and finally to the extermination of the Jews. “Read the book, as one always learns from history. The world has changed and our television and other media are powerful, and certainly different to that of Germany in the thirties under Joseph Goebbels. Nevertheless, the talk of camps and a national register to eliminate the Muslim and Jewish communities is ominous,” Amarinder Singh further wrote.

In turn, Badal took a jibe at the CM and said he would soon be sending him a bundle of books written by prominent Sikh scholars detailing how the Congress party and its first family had “planned and engineered” attack on ‘Harmandar Sahib’ as well as the “mass killing” of Sikhs in Delhi and other parts of the country. “This gift of books could also force you to have a change of mind and forsake servility towards the Gandhi family and make you more sensitive towards the suffering of your own community,” added Badal.

 

Related:

George Soros calls out Modi on Kashmir, Hindutva
CAA-NPR-NRC means of harassing specific communities: Teesta Setalvad
The Economist turns up the heat on Modi
India plummets 10 place on Global Democracy Index

The post Punjab CM sends ‘Mein Kampf’ copy to SAD Chief to show implications of CAA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Modi’s India & Hitler’s Third Reich: a look at the Nuremberg laws https://sabrangindia.in/modis-india-hitlers-third-reich-look-nuremberg-laws/ Tue, 10 Dec 2019 19:04:45 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/12/10/modis-india-hitlers-third-reich-look-nuremberg-laws/ CAB 2019, discriminatory citizenship and now a nationwide NPR-NRC:Is India headed the German way? In the 1930s after a sweep to power, the Reichstag passed a slew of laws that discriminated against its Jews, Romans, Blacks and dissenters. Called the Law for Protection of German Blood & German Honour, the world watched as othering became […]

The post Modi’s India & Hitler’s Third Reich: a look at the Nuremberg laws appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
CAB 2019, discriminatory citizenship and now a nationwide NPR-NRC:Is India headed the German way? In the 1930s after a sweep to power, the Reichstag passed a slew of laws that discriminated against its Jews, Romans, Blacks and dissenters. Called the Law for Protection of German Blood & German Honour, the world watched as othering became the German way.

Back home, in the India of 2019, are there similarities? MS Golwalkar (Bunch of Thoughts, We or Our Nationhood Defined)  and BS Moonje (a Ten Day Diary) were both equally struck by not just Hitler’s Germany’s discriminatory laws and policies (vis a vis Jews) but committed also to fascist Italy’s violent, militaristic mode to achieve its goals.

hitler

Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag unanimously adopted the a law, that was discriminatory. India by excluding Muslim migrants from equal rights to claim citizenship by naturalisation is going down this same, dangerous path.

It was in 1920 that the Nazi Party’s 25-point programme spelt out their objective of segregating Jews from ‘Aryan’ society and ending their economic, social and political rights. After storming into power in 1933, the Nazis started moving quickly towards this objective by bringing in laws and regulations to isolate Jews. It is estimated that nearly 2,000 such statutory changes were ordered at all levels, from national to provincial to local. Some of these anti-Semitic laws are listed below.

Before that, a timeline of events. Is India going the same way ?
 

What Happened in Nazi Germany

  • 1933: New laws to remove Jews from government service; forbidding Jews to become lawyers; limiting number of Jewish students in public schools; revoke citizenship of naturalised Jews and “undesirables”; banning them from editorial posts; banning ‘Kosher’- ritual slaughter of animals.

  • 1934: Jewish students forbidden from appearing in exams for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and law; Jews excluded from military service.

  • 1935: Infamous Nuremberg Laws: exclude German Jews from Reich citizenship and lose voting rights; prohibit them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of “German or German-related blood.”

  • 1935-36: Jews banned from parks, restaurants and swimming pools; not allowed use of electrical/optical equipment, bicycles, typewriters or records; Jewish students removed from German schools and universities; Jewish teachers banned from govt. schools.

  • 1938: Special identity cards issued to Jews; excluded from cinema, theatre, concerts, exhibitions, beaches and holiday resorts; forced to add the names ‘Sarah’ or ‘Israel’ to their own; Jews’ passports stamped with a red letter ‘J’.

  • On November 9-10 night (called Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass) countrywide violence against Jews, synagogues burnt and shops destroyed.

  • 1939: Many Jews evicted from their homes; Jews’ radios confiscated; Jews told to hand over all gold, silver, diamonds, and other valuables to the state without compensation; curfew for Jews.

  • 1940: Jews’ telephones confiscated; war-time ration cards for clothes stopped.

  • 1941: Jews forbidden use of public telephones; forbidden to keep pets; forbidden to leave the country.

  • 1942: Fur coats and woollen items of all Jews confiscated; not allowed to receive eggs or milk.

This is only the story of some of the legal changes. In life, Jews along with Roma people, sexual minorities, trade unionists, communists and social democrats, blacks – all ‘Non-Aryans’ – were systematically isolated, tortured and killed in the most horrendous ways. Often, these laws were used as pretext for violence. The Nazi storm troopers implemented these policies, which were fully sanctioned by the fascist rulers and its Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.

What did the Laws begin to say?

The Nuremberg Lawswere exclusivist, anti-Semitic and racist. Enacted by the German Parliament on September 15, 1935, the two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans; and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights. The laws were expanded on November 26, 1935 to include Romani people and Blacks.This supplementary decree defined Romanis as “enemies of the race-based state”, the same category as Jews.

Out of sly foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did not commence until after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide bookburning. Jewish citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.

These statutory diktats, known as the Nuremberg Laws, had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned and (subsequent to March 8, 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Germany’s notorious concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle class business owners and professionals were forced to take menial employment.

Will CAB and Nationwide NRC set the base for systemic discrimination?

The ideological underpinnings of the present regime are there for all to see. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been clear in the past of its support to discriminatory citizenship. It has also lauded what the Nazis did. RSS supremo and chief ideologue M.S. Golwalkar has this to say in his famed book“We – Or Our Nationhood Defined”:

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. (p.87-88)

Golwalkar goes on to define the Hindu Nation and asserts that “All those not belonging to the national i.e. Hindu Race, Religion, Culture and Language, naturally fall out of the pale of real ‘National’ life.” (p.99) He advises that such people would be considered foreigners if they “maintain their racial, religious and cultural differences.” (p.101)

The RSS ideologue then puts it out in crystal clear terms:

.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. (p. 105)

Besides discrimination, violence, fear and intimidation have been the RSS way. As India heads into the new year, violence and conflict are likely to follow this brazen abrogation of rights.

 

Related:
The Ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is both Hate-Ridden and Supremacist – Part 1

 

The post Modi’s India & Hitler’s Third Reich: a look at the Nuremberg laws appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Re-wind to Dr Caligari and his Somnambulist Nation-state: India 2019 https://sabrangindia.in/re-wind-dr-caligari-and-his-somnambulist-nation-state-india-2019/ Sat, 15 Jun 2019 09:44:42 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/06/15/re-wind-dr-caligari-and-his-somnambulist-nation-state-india-2019/ Fear and disbelief numbed many of us who were watching enthusiastic anchors on several Indian news channels, announce Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s spectacular success in the General Elections 2019. It is now widely clear, even to the most naïve mind that these general elections in India were fought on the back of exploits of nationalistic […]

The post Re-wind to Dr Caligari and his Somnambulist Nation-state: India 2019 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Fear and disbelief numbed many of us who were watching enthusiastic anchors on several Indian news channels, announce Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s spectacular success in the General Elections 2019. It is now widely clear, even to the most naïve mind that these general elections in India were fought on the back of exploits of nationalistic sentiments rather than any development, unemployment or farmer distress issues. They were undoubtedly one of the most vilely campaigned for, where the Modi left no stone unturned to disrepute his opponents.  Since 2014 the dream of  Hindu rashtra that has been sowed into the collective consciousness of the majority is leading to violent confrontations on a quotidian basis.

 Dr Caligari
 
It has become imperative to understand and decipher the serge of right-wing populist leadership that India has seen from 2013 onwards. At this critical time, to understand and probe this astonishing victory of Narendra Modi and his party, the necessity to look at the history of right-wing populism is both essential and urgent. While traditional historical documents tend to privilege great events and leaders, other valuable and useful sources such as photographs, films, family albums, census records are useful to discern the lives of the larger populace. Films are one such important historical document of their times.  The language of film, the narrative, cites of love and violence amongst other crucial aspects is a vital sources of such an investigation.
 
Can a work of art, a painting, a photograph or a film be analysed as a forewarning of death, terror and tyranny? The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) is considered the definitive work of German Expressionist cinema in film history is one such film. But more than its visual style which effectively portrays its disjointed and horrific world, the film is also considered almost a prophetic warning of what was to come in the Germany of the 1930s-40s.
 
The protagonist Francis (Friedrich Feher), a young man recalls the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane have gone through in the recent past. On the occasion of the annual fair in Holstenwall, Francis and his friend Alan visit an exhibit — The Cabinet of DrCaligari, where the doctor shows off his somnambulist friend Cesare and awakens him from his deep sleep. When Alan enquires about his future, Cesare declares that he will die at first dawn. The next day Allan is found dead and the search for the murderer begins. Mean while Cesare is seen carrying an unconscious Jane. The mob chasing them through the streets of stark lights and shadows is cut abruptly when Cesare just leaves Jane on the street and vanishes.

Francis then follows Calligari to mental asylum where he is the director! The local police and Francis discover that Calligarihas been influenced by an occult medieval manuscript, has found a somnambulist and places him under a hypnotic spell, to subject him to his will, even to kill.
The film portrays the mood of the Germans, depressed by their defeat in the war, the loss of jobs and lives. German society was headed towards its weakest and the most vulnerable moment in history. Adolf Hitler would take over soon.

The renowned film theorist and culture critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a distinctive book on German cinema, titled, “From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film”, in which he argues how German film directors foreshadowed in their works, the gruesome reality that was to take place almost a decade later. In his reading Caligari was Hitler and the German people were the sleepwalkers.

More often this historical reading into the collective psyche of nation gives us an insight into contemporary times, where once again populism is paired with a vision of divisive society. This reality is upon us. A disarrayed opposition with no sense of revival or reform, or even survival, has crumbled in the face of Dr Calligari who is leading the nation on a repetitive somnambular cycle, where murders, genocides, lynching and everyday misogyny is performed, over and over. The next cycle begins with absolutely no recollection of the previous one.

Those who refuse to be hypnotized to perform before this somnambulist spectacle are declared either a threat to this somnambulist state or are seen as insane inhabitants, dissonant this ‘civilized world’.

Our somnambulist nation state is so deeply attached to the idea that Dr Calligari has fed us through his ‘performances’, of speeches and personal interviews, that we celebrate the austerity of a man, while we know that in his sleep and to achieve his dream of the Hindu rashtra, he has burnt alive innocent children. We are ready to overlook the most heinous crimes because we feel that we shall be lead to a greater glory by Dr Calligari and his asylum, who while claiming to build a new India that rests on medieval notions that are bereft of any sense of human dignity. His team of Cesares roam freely on our streets and we have also liberally elected them as our representatives to continue this long dreadful sleepwalk.

History has lessons for us, but those lessons require rigour, understanding and empathy. In today’s times our collective somnambulism towards the empty spectacle of development, the fantasies of single homogenous identities have brought us to a juncture where we forget the crimes committed against our fellow citizens everyday, just as the new dawn cracks open.For the people of Germany the forewarning was wrapped in expressionism, our warnings were all around us when social welfare became secondary to profits, and the definition of development became flyovers, flashy malls and photo-shopped images.
 
This seismograph of the collective sub-consciousness of willingness to be violent has just started. Those of us who have been unable to be hypnotized are the ones who will have to endure the pain caused by this violence. At the same time, we will also have to fight intelligently and innovatively without fearing even bigger failures than those we have already endured.
 
(The author is a freelance writer, based out of Pune. She writes on issues of Cinema, Gender, Caste, De-notified Tribes, and Culture at the intersection of Neo-liberalism. She teaches Journalism and Film Studies at FLAME University)

The post Re-wind to Dr Caligari and his Somnambulist Nation-state: India 2019 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Why is Adolf Hitler Hindutva’s chosen mascot in India? https://sabrangindia.in/why-adolf-hitler-hindutvas-chosen-mascot-india/ Wed, 08 May 2019 06:17:02 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/05/08/why-adolf-hitler-hindutvas-chosen-mascot-india/ Question arises why Hitler is so ‘popular’ in India – especially among middle and upper middle class youth, professionals, etc? And this despite the fact that in his best seller book he specifically says that Indians are not capable of self-rule and he would rather see them under British rule than anyone else. In 2018, An […]

The post Why is Adolf Hitler Hindutva’s chosen mascot in India? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Question arises why Hitler is so ‘popular’ in India – especially among middle and upper middle class youth, professionals, etc? And this despite the fact that in his best seller book he specifically says that Indians are not capable of self-rule and he would rather see them under British rule than anyone else.

Hitler

In 2018, An Indian publisher came under fire for including Hitler in a children’s book about world leaders who have “devoted their lives for the betterment of their country and people.” Many Indians have been in the news for their love and admiration for him and his brand of “patriotism.”
 
Hitler’s relation with India cannot be explained through the western lens of imperialism. An extract from ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ by Subhash Gatade tries to explain how the rise of Hitler worship in India is symptomatic of the deep rot that has replaced pluralism and secularism.
 
Dear Hitler
 
Why does Hitler’s legacy in India greatly differs from that in the West? More removed from the traumas associated with World War II and the Holocaust (An extract from ‘Hindutva’s Second Coming’ by Subhash Gatade, www.mediahouse.online)
 
…………………………………………………………………….
 
..An innocent question sometimes comes up with very troubling answer(s).
 
J’admire ( I admire)… a simple exercise given to students to know from them whom they appreciate as a great historical figure or a hero, became a great learning experience for a teacher who taught French at a private school.
 
Writer and Journalist Dileep D’souza, who has authored many books, and writes on social-political causes shared the experience of his wife who posed the said question before them during a discussion. What she was expecting that they would mention Gandhi or Bhagat Singh or other luminaries of India’s struggle for freedom and progress but none of her predictions came true. There was a lone student whose choice was Mahatma Gandhi but nine out of 25 students in her class admired Hitler as a hero or as a great historical figure.
 
Explaining his choice the 10 th grader talked of Hitler’s ‘fantastic oratory’, how he loved his country, how he was a ‘great patriot’ and how he helped restore ‘a sense of pride’ to Germany which it had lost after the defeat in the first world war. He had not much sympathy for the millions he slaughtered, his response to it seemed to rationalise it, that ‘some of them were traitors’.
 
Definitely, it was not possible for her to raise questions over this portrayal where an individual was being euologised as a great ”patriot” who had led his country to a devastating war which led to millions of deaths of his own country wo/men. How can his struggle be construed as ‘lifting the country from humiliation’ when the deadly war culminated in the division of the country and required help from two big superpowers – namely the USA and the erstwhile USSR – to rebuild it? What is this ‘self-esteem’ which needs ethnic cleansing of millions of Jews – mostly legal citizens of the same or neighbouring countries?
 
There are n number of reports which tell you that this particular school was no exception.
 
‘Hitler’s Cross’ that was the name of a new restaurant which had come up in Navi Mumbai. It had caused a tremendous uproar then which sort of forced the owner to change it. Commenting on this episode late Praful Bidwai, the left wing journalist and anti-nuclear activist had shared how Hitler’s admirers can be spotted among the modern urban elite as well which dominates corporate jobs, the professions and the administration. And what he said about youth’s opinion about Hitler is worth quoting in toto :
 
..[F]or instance, applicants for admission to India’s top-rated college, St Stephen’s College in Delhi, are asked at the final interview who’s their hero or role-model. “A shocking 60 percent of the candidates say it’s Hitler”, college principal Anil Wilson told IPS.
 
The figure is astounding. The reason most students cite for their choice is Hitler’s fierce nationalism: he gave Germany “self-esteem”, lifting it from the humiliation heaped on it by the Versailles treaty; his butchery of six million Jews was so much “collateral damage”…
 
A decade and a half ago a poll by a leading newspaper in elite educational institutions across the country had similarly revealed how 17 per cent among them favoured Hitler as the kind of leader India should have. The only saving grace was that Gandhi came first with 23 per cent supporters, Atal Bihari Vajpayee – the then Prime Minister – came second with 22 per cent supporters.
 
In his writeup ‘Hitler’s Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India’s Nazi-loving Nationalists’ the author a digital entrepreneur discusses how in present day India, Hitler’s brand of fascism has taken on a distinctly Indian flavour, authenticated with a combination of ethnic hatred and Hindu nationalism, in stark contrast to the principles of ahimsa (non-violence) that accompanied India’s freedom struggle. Digging into social media he says how it
 
..[r]eveals that there is a large and growing community of Indian Hindu Nazis, who are digitally connected to neo-Nazi counterparts across the world.
 
Other social media sites and online platforms too had their share of strange, yet fanatical admiration for Hitler reframed with Hindu nationalism. “Hitler was great,” said “Hindu Hitler” on rediff.com, a popular Indian web portal. “I too love Hitler and am one of his biggest fans! Hail Hitler!” said one comment on a YouTube channel run by NewsX, a 24-hour English-language news television channel in India. I also found India-based WhatsApp groups discussing Hitler’s “positive contributions.” They portrayed him as Germany’s great leader, a “patriotic nationalist,” who “punished the “traitors.”
 
It could be argued that Indians are not the only people who admire Hitler.
 
In a speech Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had likened himself to Hitler and said that he would “be happy” to exterminate three million drug users and peddlers in the country.
 
Remember within two months of assuming office more than 3,100 people mostly alleged drug users and dealers were killed in police operations and in vigilante killings.
 
It was only last year that the Japanese Cabinet led by the Prime Minister Shizo Abe decided that ‘Mein Kampf’ is of great educational value and can be used in the nation’s classrooms. What educational value it could figure out in its racist diatribe can be a theme for the investigation, a sample of which can be shared here (quoting from Chapter 11, ‘Race and People’
 
All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.”
 
Or…
 
It is certain that the first stages of human civilization were not based so much on the use of tame animals as on the employment of human beings who were members of an inferior race.
 
When concerns were raised about this controversial step it was revealed how in 2013 a deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso had refused to resign when he was forced to withdraw his comments asking the country to follow Nazi example in changing the constitution.
 
Suggesting that Japan needs to learn from the Nazi party which had changed Germany’s constitution before WWII before the opposition was organized to prevent them. 
 
“Foreign Policy’ a journal from the USA had published a story detailing ‘positive perspective on Hitler’ in the non-western world.  As opposed to his image of a mass murderer and a racist bigot who yearned for world domination prevalent in the western world, he is also seen as an “anti-imperialist rebel” due to his nationalistic struggle against “Anglo-French-American-Zionist domination.” It quotes the then President Mugabe who then happened to be Zimbabwe’s 92-year-old strongman, comparing himself not only to Christ but to Hitler in a speech in 2003
 
“I am still the Hitler of [this] time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for,”
 
No doubt Indian’s love for Hitler is incomparable to the rest of the world.
 
 Around ten years back attention of the West was first drawn to this phenomenon when London’s Daily Telegraph, published an article with a  headline: “Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf”(20 April 2009.)
 
Question arises why Hitler is so ‘popular’ in India – especially among middle and upper middle class youth, professionals, etc? And this despite the fact that in his best seller book he specifically says that Indians are not capable of self-rule and he would rather see them under British rule than anyone else.
 
In his only visit to Hitler – during his around two year stay in Germany – when he was trying to cobble up an army to fight Britishers, the legendary freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose is reported to have asked him to revise this portion from his book which sort of denigrated Indians and glorified Britishers.
 
It is a different matter that Hitler did not pay any heed to it…
 
(Media House, 2019)
 

The post Why is Adolf Hitler Hindutva’s chosen mascot in India? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
India under Narendra Modi: A throwback to the Germany of the 1930s, or are we imagining things? https://sabrangindia.in/india-under-narendra-modi-throwback-germany-1930s-or-are-we-imagining-things/ Wed, 10 Apr 2019 06:27:16 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/04/10/india-under-narendra-modi-throwback-germany-1930s-or-are-we-imagining-things/ We can choose not to see what we don’t want to – but we can do so only at our own peril As a boy, the German novelist Max von der Grun heard  the news of Hitler becoming the Reich Chancellor over the radio on 30 January, 1933 . Two days later, he and his […]

The post India under Narendra Modi: A throwback to the Germany of the 1930s, or are we imagining things? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
We can choose not to see what we don’t want to – but we can do so only at our own peril

As a boy, the German novelist Max von der Grun heard  the news of Hitler becoming the Reich Chancellor over the radio on 30 January, 1933 . Two days later, he and his family listened to Hitler speaking to the nation, again over the radio, on his first day in office:

Hitler proclaimed his new government officially in power. He did not do so before the Reichstag, the elected parliament, but over the radio. The meaning was clear enough ….

Were the people clearly aware of his contempt for the parliament? I doubt it. …In any case, my family considered it quite proper that Hitler had ceased to address …. the deputies of the Reichstag, and had turned directly to the people.

It is hard to miss the similarities between Adolf Hitler and our very own Narendra Modi here. Like the Fuehrer, the Indian Prime Minister has never shrunk from showing the country  his complete disdain for the Indian parliament – never mind the tearful tribute he paid to this same parliament (‘The temple of democracy…’ et cetera) when he was about to enter it upon being elected to office. Within two months of coming to power, Hitler got the Reichstag to pass what is known as the Enabling Act, a piece of legislation that spelled the death of the very same Reichstag by vesting in the Chancellor the power to frame and sign off on any law he deemed necessary ‘in national interest’. For the next 12 years of the Third Reich, the Reichstag met periodically only to ratify extensions of the same Act. (In the fitness of things, the great German parliament was housed in those years in an Opera house for the most part.) Mr Modi has skipped more sessions of the parliament than he has attended during his tenure as PM. He chose to stay away even when the parliament was discussing issues that would have far-reaching consequences. Often enough, he scoffed at parliamentary protocol by repeatedly promulgating executive ordinances in lieu of proper legislation. He also announced major policy initiatives at public engagements outside of the legislature, and did so quite frequently. Most tellingly, he often side-stepped the parliament’s ‘upper’ house – the Rajya Sabha, where his party did not have a majority – on the specious argument that certain legislations did not need the Rajya Sabha’s ratification. (His histrionics have often given the parliament a near-opera house look, too.) Of course he hasn’t yet sought to dissolve parliament altogether, but there are enough straws in the wind to suggest that rewriting the Indian constitution is one of his party’s top priorities. In the event of a strong mandate for a second term in office, he can surely devise ways and means of marginalising the parliament more completely by amending the constitution and dramatically changing the balance of power in favour of the executive, i.e., of himself. The Enabling Act is but a short step from that position.

In Mr Modi’s case as in Hitler’s, the undermining of the parliamentary process took on another interesting aspect: both chose to communicate directly with the citizenry without any structured intermediation by either the legislature or the media. Hitler used the radio, while Modi’s modern-day arsenal also included TV, the internet and its numerous off-shoots. This mode of communication has unparalleled advantages for an unscrupulous practitioner of realpolitik. One, it can be an uninterrupted, and suitably grandiose, monologue which needs fear no challenge from a rational, unbiased audience which would like  to sift the grain from the chaff by asking questions . Equally importantly, by giving to the common listeners/viewers a sense (however illusory) of direct access to the country’s most powerful politician  — thereby creating in the common citizen a false sense  of empowerment — it enhances the speaker’s image very significantly in the public’s eye. This is a spectacular game of ‘republican’ showmanship that helps subvert democratic institutions far more effectively than any open assault on these same institutions could hope to achieve.

It takes a gifted demagogue to succeed in this game, and Mr Modi’s skills in this area are quite as formidable as Hitler’s. Ethical or moral scruples have hardly bothered either of them, and so their ability to manipulate public opinion has been almost limitless. When, after scoring stunning initial successes in their Russian campaign of 1941-42, the German Sixth Army led by General Paulus was routed in the battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Hitler insisted to his countrymen that what looked like a setback was actually a strategic triumph. Most Germans believed their Fuehrer. In the great demonetisation misadventure of November, 2016, Mr Modi managed to persuade a large majority of Indians – including many who lost everything they had  in that cynical image-burnishing gambit of a megalomaniac  —  that their sacrifices would eventually improve the quality of their own lives significantly. The BJP’s rousing victory in the UP Assembly elections of March, 2017 was a testimony to the fact that the PM’s words had carried conviction.

Over and above their cynical disregard of parliamentary conventions and their undoubted talent for histrionics, let us note another character trait that Hitler and Mr Modi appear to share in common: the conviction that they were ordained to play a messianic role in the lives and affairs of their respective nations. Hitler’s capacity for deluding himself on this score has been demonstrated too often to bear repetition. For Mr Modi, there are enough tell-tale signs that he is also convinced he is a messiah: referring to himself in the third person without a trace of embarrassment; an obsessive craving for photo-ops to show his carefully-groomed physiognomy to the world every minute of the day; laying claim to  credit for anything good happening in his time, even when it has had not the slightest link to him personally; equally, a fervent belief that all social or economic ills predate his tenure or are the results of the opposition’s conspiracy; and the compulsive change of ‘costume’ several times in course of a day. He is clearly past that stage when he needed others to tell him he was great. He now feels it in his very blood. Only a trained psychologist can decipher for us the genesis of self-serving narcissism, but as lay citizens, we can visualise its impact on human communities easily enough. Hitler was alive and well within living memory, wasn’t he?.

Like Hitler in the early-to-mid 1930s (before he was ready to formally launch his campaign for a pan-European empire and the Holocaust), Mr Modi has been playing upon the basest instincts that still survive in most human collectives (usually lying dormant, but liable to be awakened into a frenzied existence if prodded cleverly enough) despite centuries of civilising influences : a deep-rooted sense of insecurity; suspicion of others in the community perceived to be  competing for the same finite resources; a  visceral antipathy towards the unfamiliar and ‘the other’; a mindless obsequiousness towards someone seen as more powerful than ‘us’; and a non-rational susceptibility to pomp and grand ritual.  Hitler invoked fantastic images of a triumphant Germany bringing all the ‘inferior’ nations to their heels; Mr Modi’s ideology exults in the project to revive the supposedly unsurpassed glory of an ancient Bharat. For both, militant nationalism is the way to go. For both, conflict and strife are not only unavoidable in achieving their grand objectives, they are enmeshed with these objectives so completely as to be indistinguishable from them. For Hitler, the ‘other’ comprised Jews, Slavs, Communists and radical Socialists, and such ‘non-mainstream’ elements as homosexuals and gypsies. Mr Modi has not yet had the opportunity (a second term in office is sure to give him one) of fully propounding his ‘world view’ in public, but has already done and said and insinuated enough to point to his unmistakable enemies: non –Hindu religious minorities (Muslims most of all: as the Chief Minister of the western-Indian state of Gujarat, he virtually presided over a pogrom of Muslims in February/March 2002 which left over 2000 dead; and he never so much as acknowledge that it was a massacre); communists and socialists and social liberals; civil rights activists; and, of course, Pakistan (both the state and the nation). Though he has not yet been able (for fear of losing elections) to articulate it clearly, his resentment at Dalits and other ‘low’ caste denominations is unmistakable, and the RSS, inside whose  hallowed precincts his ideological moorings rest, has never made any secret of its distaste for every societal segment other than the ‘high-bred’ Hindu male. Denial of justice in nearly every walk of life to Dalits has been quite as pronounced and frequent in Mr Modi’s India as their denial to Muslims. Both these communities have been repeated victims of orgies of violence and abuse staged by Mr Modi’s cohort, and he has clearly given his blessings to these abominations  by doing nothing and even saying little against them. In fact, the most brazen perpetrators of such crimes have often received overt endorsement from his own establishment. This establishment has also repeatedly equivocated on issues such as gay rights and gender equality. Many of its influential voices have expressed horror at decriminalising gay sex. They have also been quite open about how they think that women ‘belong’ in family homes rather than at the workplace. It is well-known that Hitler loathed homosexuality, and gay men happened to be among the first detainees at Nazi concentration camps.  As for women, Nazi Germany insisted on taking them out from the country’s work-force, encouraging them to be homemakers and mothers instead.

The points at which Mr Modi’s personality – as well as his personal style of functioning – converge with Hitler’s are too striking to be wished away as accidental. That, in less than five years’ time India is so far advanced on the path to what can only be described as a variant of Fascism points to the fact that the congruence goes beyond similar character traits alone. The historical contexts are very important here. Weimar Germany was an ill-fated republic that can be said to have been doomed at its birth to early decay and death. On the other hand, when Mr Modi came to power, India had an on-the-whole stable economy, and despite wide-ranging social and economic inequalities (and resultant tensions), was a functioning democracy. That he has been able to so seriously undermine that democratic structure in such short time demonstrates the odious forces he has brought into play. Writing in 1939, the German journalist Sebastian Haffner recalled a conversation he had had with his father soon after Adolf Hitler rose to power in January, 1933:

I discussed the prospects of the new government with my father. We agreed that it had a good chance of doing a lot of damage, but not much chance of surviving very long. How could things turn out so completely different?

What had given the young Haffner and his father hope was that, in the 14 years since the creation of the Weimar Republic in November, 1918, Germany had had as many as 14 Chancellors. Since Hitler’s hold on power was unlikely to last long, they told one another, there was only so much harm he could possibly do.  But when things did turn out to be so very different, Haffner (who had to flee Germany in 1938) agonised over the question ‘how’. And, soon enough, he had the answer:

Perhaps it was just because we were all so certain that they could not do so – and relied on that with far too much confidence. So we neglected to consider that it might, if worse came to worst, be necessary to prevent the disaster from happening.

Looking around India today, one cannot help a creeping feeling that, like Haffner and his father in Germany in 1933, we may soon rue what we are doing now. More accurately, what we are not doing now but would have, if only we were a tad less smug in our liberal complacency. For we are looking on as the Indian state descends steadily into bedlam.

Anjan Basu freelances as literary critic, commentator and translator. He can be reached at basuanjan52@gmail.com

Courtesy: Counter Current

The post India under Narendra Modi: A throwback to the Germany of the 1930s, or are we imagining things? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Quantifying the Holocaust: Measuring murder rates during the Nazi genocide https://sabrangindia.in/quantifying-holocaust-measuring-murder-rates-during-nazi-genocide/ Thu, 03 Jan 2019 07:41:10 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2019/01/03/quantifying-holocaust-measuring-murder-rates-during-nazi-genocide/ Even though the Holocaust is one of the best documented genocides in a historical sense, there is surprisingly little quantitative data available, even on major critical events. A concentration camp in Poland. AkzuzkA/shutterstock.com What’s more, this history is often told in figures too large to comprehend on the human scale. Large numbers – like the […]

The post Quantifying the Holocaust: Measuring murder rates during the Nazi genocide appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Even though the Holocaust is one of the best documented genocides in a historical sense, there is surprisingly little quantitative data available, even on major critical events.


A concentration camp in Poland. AkzuzkA/shutterstock.com

What’s more, this history is often told in figures too large to comprehend on the human scale. Large numbers – like the infamous 6 million people murdered – obscure the significance of key operations that shaped this genocide, leaving instead just a vague characterization of a massively devastating event.

In a digital age, mathematics, data science and visualization can help make sense of these events for new generations. By examining a rare and neglected dataset of human train deportations from the period, my study, published on Jan. 2, begins to uncover the true scale of slaughter.
 

Operation Reinhard

My work investigates a period in 1942, referred to as Operation Reinhard, when the Nazis efficiently shuttled about 1.7 million victims, often whole Jewish communities, across the European railway network in train carriages to Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. Almost all of those who arrived at these death camps were murdered, usually within hours, in the gas chambers. Because the Nazis destroyed nearly all records of the massacre, it is important to try to uncover what actually happened at the time.

My study looks at the “kill rate,” or murders per day. This reveals a sudden massive slaughter after Hitler “ordered all action speeded up,” as one SS officer put it, on July 23, 1942. Approximately 1.5 million Jews were murdered in only 100 days, including in shootings outside the death camps, with nearly 500,000 victims killed each month during August, September and October. That’s approximately 15,000 murders every day.

The slaughter then soon terminated, as there were hardly any Jews remaining in the area to kill.

The full scope of this genocidal slaughter appears to be undocumented in history. Available information before this study was mostly reconstructed indirectly, partially conjectured, and usually given on an annual timescale, rather than daily or monthly. That meant completely missing the three-month slaughter.

My analysis was based on carefully compiled train records presented in a 1987 book by Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad. Arad documents approximately 500 transportations from some 400 different Polish Jewish communities, recording for individual days the location, number of victims of each transportation and final death camp destination.

My analysis required carefully sorting and working with the dataset, as well as including other surviving data. In addition, I generated a spatio-temporal map and film of the data. These visualizations plotted the 400 communities on a map of Poland and indicated the time sequence of all deportations to the death camps over the whole year 1942.

While Operation Reinhard is considered the largest single murder campaign of the Holocaust, the extraordinary speed at which it operated to obliterate the Jewish people has been poorly estimated in the past and almost completely unknown to the general public. This massacre of unparalleled scale took place in just three short months, and was only captured through analysis of Arad’s dataset.

This minimal time indicates the enormous coordination involved by a state machinery responsive to the Fuhrer’s murderous will to eradicate a people. The train records show how zones were emptied of Jewish communities one by one in an organized manner and how intense kill rates were achieved in targeted areas that only slowed as victims ran out. My plots of the data highlight the pace and frenzy of this mass murder.
 

Measuring genocide

Despite more than 70 years of research into the Holocaust, this appears to be the first attempt to graph aggregated data of the genocide, chronologically and spatially. My data-driven approach captures Operation Reinhard in a different perspective to the volumes of historical reports.

Genocide scholars often compare rates of recent genocides to the rate at which the Nazi Holocaust occurred, treating the latter as a kind of benchmark for genocide severity. As such, currently many social scientists maintain that the Rwandan genocide was the most “intense genocide” of the 20th century, with a sustained period of murders occurring at a rate three to five times more rapid than the Holocaust.

However, my work shows that while the Rwanda massacre killings were 8,000 victims per day for a 100-day period, the Holocaust was nearly double this rate during a similar 100-day period in Operation Reinhard.

That suggests that Holocaust kill rate has been underestimated on an order of six to 10 times. In my view, these sorts of comparisons have limited usefulness, and clearly diminish the Holocaust’s historical standing.

The Holocaust stands out as a demonstration of how the efficient machinery of government was turned on people in an unparalleled way. It transcended in its ruthlessness and systemic efficiency. This is the key lesson of the Holocaust that I believe must not be forgotten.

Lewi Stone, Professor of Biomathematics, RMIT University
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Quantifying the Holocaust: Measuring murder rates during the Nazi genocide appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Understand the Linkages between Manu, Nietzsche, Hitler and Hindutva Worldview https://sabrangindia.in/understand-linkages-between-manu-nietzsche-hitler-and-hindutva-worldview/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:13:46 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2018/07/17/understand-linkages-between-manu-nietzsche-hitler-and-hindutva-worldview/ Manu and his ‘magnum opus’ Manusmriti keeps hogging headlines in the 21st century as well. Thanks to the fascination it still holds among the Hindutva supremacists of various kinds even around seventy years after the promulgation of Constitution, which in the words of Dr Ambedkar, had “ended the rule by Manu”. The latest to join the ‘mission […]

The post Understand the Linkages between Manu, Nietzsche, Hitler and Hindutva Worldview appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Manu and his ‘magnum opus’ Manusmriti keeps hogging headlines in the 21st century as well.

Manu

Thanks to the fascination it still holds among the Hindutva supremacists of various kinds even around seventy years after the promulgation of Constitution, which in the words of Dr Ambedkar, had “ended the rule by Manu”.

The latest to join the ‘mission glorification’ of Manusmritihappens to be another stalwart from the Hindutva brigade, called Sambhaji Bhide, the leader of Shivpratishthan Sangathan, who also happens to be an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case. Addressing his followers known as dharkaris (believers of violence) – as opposed to varkaris(who go to Pandharpur from Pune on foot), he exhorted them to disseminate Hindu religion and form Hindu Nation. He also added how ‘Manusmriti was superior to the teachings of saints Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram’. 

Looking at the sensitive nature of his speech before dharkaris, which extolled Manusmriti and in an indirect way humiliated the great saints of Bhakti movement, demands have been raised to ‘arrest him’ and as usual, the case government has formally promised to look into the case. 
Perhaps, it is a foregone conclusion what will happen to this particular case. 

The importance of Sambhaji Bhide can be seen from the fact that he is considered a ‘guru’ of PM Narendra Modi and a ‘mentor‘ of Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis.

Anyway, fascination for Manusmriti extends across the Sangh Parivar.

It was only last year (2017) that a leading ideologue of the RSS Indresh Kumar had participated in a programme held merely 15 days before the 90-year celebrations of Mahad Satyagrah in Jaipur and showered fulsome praise on Manu and Manusmriti.
Mahad Satyagrah (December 25, 1927) is considered a historic juncture in Dalit movement, when Dr Ambedkar had symbolically burnt Manusmritiin a massive public programme in the presence of thousands of people unleashing an all-out attack against Manusmritifor its anti-human core, which denied any rights to the shudras, atishudrasand women. 

Coming back to the public meeting held in Jaipur, one can note that the theme of the meeting held under the auspices of some Chanakya Gana Samitywas ‘Adi Purush Manu ko Pehchanein, Manusmriti ko Janein’(Know Adipurush Manu, Understand Manu Smriti) and the invitation described Manusmritias mainly ‘opposed to caste discrimination and caste system’. In his detailed speech, Indresh Kumar told the audience that Manu was opposed not only to the caste system, but inequality as well, and historians of yore have presented a ‘wrong/confusing’ picture of Manu before the masses ‘under pressure’. He also called Manu the first jurist of the world in the field of social harmony and social justice.

The significance of open invocation of Manu by a senior RSS functionary in Jaipur was not lost on people, as it happens to be the only city in India, where a statue of Manu has been installed in court premises around two decades back when another Sangh veteran Bhairon Singh Shekhawat happened to be the chief minister of the state. 

No doubt, the move to legitimise Manu or presenting him in a new light is not restricted merely to building statues, and has taken many forms. 

Perhaps few people would remember how Uma Bharati’s (then a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party) Madhya Pradesh government promulgated an ordinance for banning cow slaughter with an official statement which extolled the virtues of Manusmriti. ( Janurary 2005) It said: 
Manusmriti ranks the slaughterer of cow as predator and prescribes hard punishment for him’. 

It was for the first time in the legal history of independent India that a law was being justified for being in tune with Manusmriti. It had no qualms in declaring its commitment to Manusmriti, although it was very well known that this act was in contravention to the basic principles of constitution.

Individual choices apart, why does Manusmriti still mesmerises the Hindutva brigade en bloc?

Thevalorisation of Manusmriti, which is an ongoing process in the ‘Parivar’ circles, serves a double purpose.

– It absolves Manusmiritiof all those ‘blames’ for which it has been at the receiving end of a broad spectrum of people/formations, right from the radical Dalits to the rationalists.
– Secondly, it thus prepares the ground for a further dubious/devious move by the Sangh Parivar, namely ‘searching’ the ‘real enemies of the Dalits’ and herein, it ‘discovers’ Muslims. 

Today, articles, pamphlettes and even books can be easily spotted which tend to further glorify Manusmriti. A book by Prof K V Paliwal, Ph D, Manusmriti aur Ambedkar(Hindi) can be cited as an interesting example to illustrate the point. Published by some ‘Hindu Writers’ Forum’, New Delhi (March 2007), the author’s ideological closeness to the worldview of Hindutva supremacism is clear by merely browsing the list of more than twenty books authored by him published by this same Forum. 

It would be opportune here to share an extract from the preface of the said book Manusmriti aur Ambedkar to know how the author addresses the issue of revisiting the ancient text. Titled Yeh Pustak Kyon? (Why This Book? Page 3) It says:
“This book has been written for those people who are rather confused about Manu’s Manusmriti and feel that it supports the present caste system, upper class-lower class and untouchability. The second aim of the book is remove this confusion that Manu was opposed to Shudras and women and was a supporter of Brahminism. Its third aim is to remove the mistaken understanding spread by modern era social reformer and Dalit leader Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Here all quotes have been excerpted from Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar Sampoorna Wangmay Volume 1 to 14.” 
The preface further tells us that the around 56 per cent of the sholkas/stanzas in the Manusmritiout of total 2865 shlokas, are later additions/mixed and referring to some, Dr Surendra Kumar, has supposedly revised the Manusmrititaking into consideration these so called ‘adulterations’ and even published a Vishudh Manusmriti (Pure Manusmriti) in 1985. According to Dr K D Paliwal,

“If this pure Manusmriti, would have been available in English by 1935 itself. Then, Dr Ambedkar would have considered differences among varnasas natural and there would have been no opposition to Manusmritithen.” 

Would it be correct to state that Dr Ambedkar misread Manusmriti,as he did not know Sanskrit language as claimed by Dr Paliwal? 

Definitely not. 

Such a baseless claim is nothing but a humiliation of a great scholar and author and limiting his vast repository of knowledge to a particular book. 

Dr Ambedkar’s own understanding of Manusmritican be seen in his incomplete work Revolution and Counterrevolution in Ancient India
According to Dr Ambedkar, Manusmritiis a ‘record of the greatest social revolution that Hindu Society has undergone’. He sees it not only as a law book, but part ethics and part religion as well. It is important also to note that whatever may be the understanding of a section of the elite about these edicts, which still feels enamoured about it, Dr Ambedkar is clear about its aim. He terms it as ‘gospel of counterrevolution’.

It is not widely discussed how Dr Ambedkar had unravelled the unholy ideological link between Manu, who inspired Nietzsche, who in turn inspired Hitler. 
And it is common knowledge how Hitler and Mussolini have in turn inspired the Manuwadis of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS: Savarkar, Munje, Hedgewar and Golwalkar.

Communalism Combat (May 2000 issue)  had collated extracts of Dr Ambedkar’s writings (From Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings & Speeches, Volume 3, published by the education department, government of Maharashtra, pages 72-87) to show how Nietzsche had felt inspired by philosophy of Hinduism which, 

“..[i]s not founded on individual justice or social utility. The philosophy of Hinduism is founded on a totally different principle. To the question what is right and what is good the answer which the philosophy of Hinduism gives is remarkable. It holds that to be right and good the act must serve the interests of this class of Supermen, namely, the Brahmins.”

Quoting from Manusmriti, he said how these 
“..[t]exts from Manu disclose the core and the heart of the philosophy of Hinduism. Hinduism is the gospel of the Superman and it teaches that what is right for the Superman is the only thing which is called morally right and morally good.

Is there any parallel to this philosophy? I hate to suggest it. But is so obvious. The parallel to this philosophy of Hinduism is to be found in Nietzsche. The Hindus will be angry at this suggestion.”

According to him, Nietzsche had praised Manusmritiin his book Anti Christin glowing terms, and had said that he is merely following the scheme of Manu:
“When I read the law book of Manu, an incomparably intellectual and superior work, it would be a sin against the spirit even to mention in the same breath with the Bible. You will guess immediately why; it has a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and superstition — it gives something to chew even to the most fastidious psychologist.”

Ambedkar had emphasised how the Nazis 
“..[t]race their ancestry from Nietzsche and regard him as their spiritual parent. Hitler has himself photographed beside a bust of Nietzsche; he takes the manuscripts of the master under his own special guardianship; extracts are chosen from Nietzsche’s writings and loudly proclaimed at the ceremonies of Nazism, as the New German Faith.”

Perhaps, it is easy to see the linkages between Manu, Nietzsche, Hitler and the worldview of Hindutva supremacism.
Manu inspired Nietzsche, Nietzsche further inspired Hitler and Mussolini, 

Hitler and Mussolini inspired RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, and RSS and Hindu Mahasabha have kept their ‘umbilical cord’ with Manusmriti alive.

The post Understand the Linkages between Manu, Nietzsche, Hitler and Hindutva Worldview appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Who Should Be India’s Role Model, Hitler or Mandela? https://sabrangindia.in/who-should-be-indias-role-model-hitler-or-mandela/ Sat, 10 Feb 2018 12:17:33 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2018/02/10/who-should-be-indias-role-model-hitler-or-mandela/ Post World War I  Germany , South Africa and India faced a similar problem. Each saw its own people in conflict .A substantial section of Germans were hostile to the citizens of Jewish origin though the Jews had been living there for 500 years or so .The original inhabitants of South Africa (who are black) were […]

The post Who Should Be India’s Role Model, Hitler or Mandela? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Post World War I  Germany , South Africa and India faced a similar problem. Each saw its own people in conflict .A substantial section of Germans were hostile to the citizens of Jewish origin though the Jews had been living there for 500 years or so .The original inhabitants of South Africa (who are black) were groaning under the inhuman rule of the white Afrikaner, who had come to their land from Holland, Germany and France in the 17th century, colonised them and become their rulers..India continues to be plagued by the hostility of a section of the majority community to both Muslims and Christians, a hostility engineered by the RSS and its various progeny including the BJP .The Muslims and Christians are natives  of India  like their Hindu counterparts , whose forefathers converted to Islam or Christianity under varying historical impulses, some only under the rule of the Muslim and British (though a few converted in recent time also  ).The RSS and its affiliates do not accept them emotionally as an equal of Hindu citizens because their religions have ‘foreign’ origin . A conflict between Hindus and Muslims was the real cause of India’s partition and formation of Pakistan.

Hitler Mandela

Hitler hated the Jews and committed unspeakable atrocities against them including genocide He butchered 6 million Jews including those from outside Germany .This inhuman act is known as the holocaust and denying this dark fact is a punishable offence now Hitler called it the ‘Final solution of the Jewish question .’Hitler committed suicide after his defeat in the Second World War (1945).His associates were put to death or imprisoned for life for their crimes.

The communal problem in India is the gift of the British, who encouraged the communal animosity between the Hindus and the Muslims to divide and rule .There used to be  Hindu -Muslim riots in the country from time to time  .The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) was formed in 1925 to oppose “the yavan-snakes (i.e. the Muslims), who, reared on the milk of non-cooperation were provoking riots in the nation with their poisonous hissing.
 
“Hedgewar, the first Sar Sangh Sanchalak, also declared that they (the brigands of the RSS) were not to join the National Movement for Independence.  That explains why the British rulers gave them full freedom to expand and flourish though they were openly organised on military lines with uniform and parades. This also explains why M.S.Golwarkar , their iconic second Sar Sangh Sanchalak, declared Freedom Fighters as “Traitors”.

 Golwarkar was deeply impressed and inspired by Hitler and his “final solution to the Jewish question” though he was not fully aware of the extent of the  horrors that he had committed. Hitler wanted a Germany only for Germans of ‘pure race’ and he annihilated the Jews out of his hatred for inferior races (the Jews being one of them). Golwalkar wanted India as a Hindu Nation for the Hindus only on the same pattern. In 1938, when he wrote his book containing these ideas (We or Our Nationhood Defined), he could envisage driving Muslims and Christians out of India. So, he advocated a Hindu Nation in which the minorities must “cease to be foreigners 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.’

The RSS still considers (in their heart of hearts) minorities to be foreigners, who have no claim on India, which, to them, is a Hindu Rashtra. It has not yet reconciled to the Indian Constitution, which treats all Indian citizens as equal regardless of their religion or other differences.

It is to achieve this goal in one form or another that the sangh has been keeping the communal pot boiling. It is now in power, but can it really attain its goal of converting of converting India into a Hindu Rashtra in the 21st century? More importantly, should it cling to its dream of a Hindu Rashtra or think of India’s larger interest it claims to protect or love more than others?

The white rulers of South Africa were second only to Hitler in subjecting people on racial grounds to inhuman treatment .The handful of Afrikaners treated the rightful black citizens  of the country like animals under their law on racial segregation. Nelson Mandela himself spent 27 years in jail doing hard labour .When the white rulers found the pressure of the international community difficult to answer, they agreed to a settlement. Nelson Mandela did not think of retaliation or settling accounts with the tyrannical white rulers but thought of the interest of his motherland, which, to him, was supreme .South Africa, has now a democratic constitution without any discrimination against the Afrikaner. Though the forefathers of the Afrikaners had come from Europe and belong to a different race, they were not asked to go back. They are now full-fledges citizens of South Africa on an equal fitting with the blacks.
 
Our minorities are own flesh and blood, they are natives of India with the same claims and rights on her as anyone of us. Mandela has shown the way: how a person loving his motherland overcomes even bitterness and anger to serve her interest. Indians have not suffered at the hands of the minorities and have no accounts to settle with them. The RSS had no grievance against the British who exploited India and economically committed atrocities against them. They have no grievance against them even today. Is it logical then to nurture such an irrational hatred against the Muslims for a set of atrocities, imagined or even real, committed by some Muslim rulers, centuries ago?
 
Nelson Mandela has shown the way. It is he not Adolf Hitler who should be India’s role model.

 

The post Who Should Be India’s Role Model, Hitler or Mandela? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
This is Just About Hitler, Don’t Draw Parallels https://sabrangindia.in/just-about-hitler-dont-draw-parallels/ Fri, 29 Sep 2017 06:29:06 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2017/09/29/just-about-hitler-dont-draw-parallels/ Once Upon A Time There Was One Tyrant Ruler Hitler 1. Hitler had not got married. 2. Hitler used to think that people of certain religion were enemies of the country. 3. Hitler’s supporters could not tolerate any criticism against him. 4. Hitler used to paint and sell colours in his childhood. 5. All the […]

The post This is Just About Hitler, Don’t Draw Parallels appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Once Upon A Time There Was One Tyrant Ruler Hitler
Hitler
1. Hitler had not got married.
2. Hitler used to think that people of certain religion were enemies of the country.
3. Hitler’s supporters could not tolerate any criticism against him.
4. Hitler used to paint and sell colours in his childhood.
5. All the means of publicity, newspapers, magazines were devoted to publicise Hitler.
6. Hitler had crushed all Labour movements.
7. Hitler used to call his rivals anti-nationals/traitors.
8. Hitler had joined the Nazi party as an ordinary worker and gone on to finish all his rivals and had become the leader of the party.
9. Hitler had come to power campaigning that he would end all problems in a jiffy.
10. Hitler, after he came to power could not manage to end any problems, but he certainly managed to destroy Germany.
11. Hitler had come up with a slogan to come to power— gute Tage kommen(good days will come).
12. Hitler’s party when it won, he went to the German Parliament for the first time and cried profusely.
13. Hitler had come to power lying.
14. Hitler used to love dressing up and look good.
15. Hitler had the consummate art of making lies look like truth.
16. Hitler always used to say , Ich, mich, selbst (German for I, me,).
17. Hitler used to love giving speeches on Radio.
18. Hitler used to have a lover whom he used to get spied on.
19. Hitler always used in his speeches “ Freunde, Brüder und Schwestern ”(Friends, brothers and sisters).
20. Hitler used to love getting photographed.
 
P.S: This post is just and just about Hitler. Don’t draw any parallels.

The post This is Just About Hitler, Don’t Draw Parallels appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
Following Hitler’s Footsteps, RSS-run Garbh Vigyan Sanskar is in pursuit of a “Master Race” https://sabrangindia.in/following-hitlers-footsteps-rss-run-garbh-vigyan-sanskar-pursuit-master-race/ Sat, 27 May 2017 06:05:50 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2017/05/27/following-hitlers-footsteps-rss-run-garbh-vigyan-sanskar-pursuit-master-race/ The RSS agenda of Hindu Rashtra draws heavily on the superiority of Aryan race and greatness of Brahmanical values. The ideology constructed by this organisation tells us that Aryans are the superior race. The whole foundation of the concept of Hindu nation as the teacher-leader of the World derives from twin and inseparable notions of […]

The post Following Hitler’s Footsteps, RSS-run Garbh Vigyan Sanskar is in pursuit of a “Master Race” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>
The RSS agenda of Hindu Rashtra draws heavily on the superiority of Aryan race and greatness of Brahmanical values. The ideology constructed by this organisation tells us that Aryans are the superior race. The whole foundation of the concept of Hindu nation as the teacher-leader of the World derives from twin and inseparable notions of the racial theory, promoted by British and Brahmanism, clothed in the language of Hinduism. This came to fore once again when the spokesmen of Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Uterus Science Culture), an offshoot of Arogya Bharati (health wing) of RSS, committed to creating Uttam santati, (Best Progeny) based on ancient Indian knowledge of Ayurveda outlined their plans. The claim is that by following the proper instructions as put together by this outfit; one can get the children, which are tall and fair, despite their parents not being so.

RSS has many wings one of them being Arogya Bharati (health wing). It has devised meticulous plans for the couples to have a ‘perfectly customised child’. This is what has been reported in the media recently. As per the process devised by this outfit there is a period of three months of ‘shuddhikaran’ or purification for the parents. This means that the timing of intercourse is decided by the positions of the ‘planetary configurations’ and a period of abstinence once the baby is conceived. This is to be followed by series of procedures and regulations in the matters of diet in particular.

These days lot of illogical understanding is easily passing the muster of popular perception in the name of traditional knowledge. The extent of this is the belief that ancient India had advanced plastic surgery techniques, and great leaps in aviation science, including Pushpak Viman (Aeroplane), the truth is that modern medical science has broken lot of mysteries of the sconce of child bearing, growth and rearing. The conception of child does not depend on the planetary configurations but on the meeting of sperm with ovum, on and around the day of ovulation of the female. The Hindutva ideology is bent to promote the faith-based knowledge systems, undermining the immaculate researchers and gains of modern science. Even earlier Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, in the previous NDA regime had introduced changes in the educational curriculum by introducing Paurohitya (Priest craft) and Karmakand (Ritualism). One of the components of this was Putra Kameshti Yagna (ritual to get male child), the performance of which should lead to the birth of a male child. As per current knowledge, the sex of the baby is determined by the male’s Y or X chromosome meeting the ovum and not by any other influence which these rituals are supposed to influence.

The health of the baby and its rearing has many components, which included proper dietary supplements, regular exercises of the mother and good nutrition and rearing of the child as she comes up in the society. The growth of body, physical and intellectual is a long process of rearing where the proper nutrition, games and intellectual stimuli, are the foundation of the health of the child. In contrast here in this scheme of things the planets, supernatural powers are projected as the main players along with the recommended diet.

RSS ideology has been inspired a lot from German Fascism not just in the matters of concept of nationalism but also in the projection of Aryan superiority. Being the World leaders-teachers as well is core part of this ideology. So a superior race is necessary in this ideology. Germany tried this in the form of eugenics. That experiment was a disaster. Nazis had the program called “Lebensborn” (“Spring of Life”), which aimed to create an Aryan master race. For this breeding of children of pure Aryan race, some 8,000 children were born in Germany and around 12,000 in Norway as part of “Lebensborn” under the direct supervision Nazi theoretician and leader, Heinrich Himmler. This encouraged women of “pure blood” to bear fair-tall Aryan children. The result was that most of such bred children did not grow on expected lines. This horrendous scheme was central part of the inhuman racial policy. This policy on one hand aimed at producing pure Aryan children and on the other hand wanted to eliminate non-Aryans like Jews, 6 million of them were killed and the forced sterilisation of people with hereditary diseases. This policy was harsh to non dominant people and to people with different ability. Needless to say that even the theory of race is totally discredited today and what we know is that we are all mixed up people with origin of Human race located in South Africa.

It is in this light that the statement of Tarun Vijay, (We have been living with dark skinned people) is to be seen. This reveals RSS understanding of white superior Aryans living with black South Indians. As such major RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar had already prescribed for a better race when he wrote, “now let us see the experiments our ancestors made in this sphere. In an effort to better the human species through cross-breeding the Namboodri Brahmanas [sic] of the North were settled in Kerala and a rule was laid down that the eldest son of a Namboodri family could marry only the daughter of Vaishya, Kshatriya or Shudra communities of Kerala. Another still more courageous rule was that the first off-spring of a married woman of any class must be fathered by a Namboodri Brahman and then she could beget children by her husband.” (Quoted in RSS journal Organiser, 2nd January 1962)

The spokesmen of this program tell us that they have begun their work from Gujarat, where nearly 450 babies have been born on these lines and now they intend to spread their branches in different states by 2020 as their work is already in progress in different states. What’s in store for us is very clear from this plan of health division of Hindutva fountain head. We need to harp only on rational scientific strategies in our health planning.
 

The post Following Hitler’s Footsteps, RSS-run Garbh Vigyan Sanskar is in pursuit of a “Master Race” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]>