2. THE ROWDY RAKSHASA  SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH (“RSS”)

Via the Delhi-based British historian William Dalrymple, writing in the New York Review of Books in 2005:

…..the RSS was founded in direct imitation of European
fascist movements. Like its 1930s models, it still sponsors daily
parades in khaki uniforms and requires militaristic salutes; in fact,
the RSS salute differs from that of the Nazis only in the angle of the
forearm, which is held horizontally over the chest. The RSS aims to
create a corps of dedicated paramilitary zealots who will bring about a
revival of what it sees as the lost Hindu golden age of national
strength and purity. The BJP, the Hindu nationalist party which ruled
India from 1999 until last May, was founded as the political wing of the
RSS, and most senior BJP figures hold posts in both organizations. The
BJP is certainly much more moderate than the RSS—like the Likud in
Israel, the BJP is a party which embraces a wide spectrum of right-wing
opinion, ranging from mildly conservative free marketeers to raving
ultra-nationalists. But both organizations believe, as the centerpiece
of their ideology, that India is in essence a Hindu nation and that the
minorities may live in India only if they acknowledge this.

The RSS publicly claims to have approximately 5-6 million members. However, The Guardian recently reported
that the RSS actually has 40 million members in India. The organisation
has at least 50,000 branches across the country, with meetings held
daily. The RSS also has approximately 100 affiliate organisations.
Furthermore, Bloomberg recently confirmed that the RSS is running a network of 18,000 schools across India.

Although the RSS’s core ideology was
initially influenced by Italian Fascism, it was subsequently heavily
influenced by Hitler and Third Reich-era Nazism. Readers will be aware
that there is a specific term describing such organisations & individuals.

The RSS as an organisation had precisely
zero involvement in India’s struggle for independence from British
colonial rule. For all their jingoistic claims of “nationalism”,
“patriotism” and “opposition to foreigners”, the RSS did absolutely
nothing to free India during that period.

Furthermore, “nationalism”, particularly
the RSS’s definition of the concept, is of course a foreign import from
19th and 20th Century Europe; the RSS’s Nazi-inspired salutes, uniforms,
ideological aspects etc are also foreign imports to India. Readers will
note the hypocrisy.

Only male Hindus are allowed to join the
RSS. Ever since its founding in 1925, the RSS has repeatedly carried out
acts of violence against Muslims throughout India, including
involvement in the rapes and massacres during the Gujarat 2002 riots. As
discussed earlier, the RSS has also (1) been involved in the
mass-murder, rape and forced conversions of Christians, and (2) been
exposed by one of its own leaders as being responsible for multiple
terrorist attacks deliberately targeting innocent Muslims across India.
In 2004, the RSS was designated a terrorist organisation by the
Terrorism Research Center.

There are direct implications for Western countries too. As confirmed by the Financial Times, the UK’s Channel 4 News, Outlook India, the human rights group Awaaz, and most recently by The Independent,
the RSS has been using front organisations here in the West to promote
its propaganda in the United States and the United Kingdom. These front
organisations have also been diverting millions of dollars of donations
from ordinary Hindus intended for charitable humanitarian causes
(including major crises involving Muslim and Christian victims in India)
and using the money to finance the RSS’s extremist activities in India
instead.

Details on the RSS’s key founders, leaders, and core ideology are listed below.

B.S Moonje, RSS co-founder and mentor of the RSS’s first leader:

(a) Claims India should have a dictator like Hitler, promotes need to systematically promote this propaganda:

[Via M. Casolari, Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: archival evidence] “…..unless we have our own swaraj [self-rule] with a Hindu as a dictator like Shivaji of old or Mussolini
or Hitler of present day Italy and Germany…But this does not mean that
we have to sit with folded hands until some such dictator arises in
India. We should formulate a scientific scheme and carry on propaganda
for it.”

(b) Personally visits Mussolini and
multiple fascist institutions in Italy in 1931, claims Hindus need a
similar fascist movement throughout India in the form of the RSS:

[Via M. Casolari, ‘Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the
1930s: archival evidence’] “The Balilla institutions [which organised
military training and the fascist ideological indoctrination of young
Italian boys] and the conception of the whole organization have appealed
to me the most…The whole organization 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 organization…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, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] of Nagpur,
under [the RSS’s first leader and former Hindu Mahasabha member] Dr
Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived. I shall
spend the rest of my life developing and extending this institution of
Dr Hedgewar all throughout Maharashtra and other provinces.”

…..The Italy visit inspired Moonje to promote these ideas among
Hindus in Maharashtra and begin the organization of Hindu youth
movements based on this fascist model. This included a conference on
Fascism and Mussolini’s political thought in 1934, presided by RSS
founder K.B. Hedgewar and at which Moonje spoke.

[Moonje quoted in an interview with “The Mahratta”, 12
April 1931] “Leaders should imitate the youth movement of Germany and
the Balilla and Fascist organizations of Italy. I think they are
eminently suited for introduction in India, adapting them to suit the
special conditions. I have been very much impressed by these movements
and I have seen their activities with my own eyes in all details.”

(c) Promotes violence, fascism and perpetual war:

[Moone’s “Preface to the Scheme of the Central Hindu
Military Society and its Military School”] “This training is meant for
qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men
with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible causalities
(sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the
adversary.”

[Quotes from Mussolini’s “Doctrine of Fascism” in Moone’s
“Preface to the Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and its
Military School”] “I absolutely disbelieve in perpetual peace which is
detrimental and negative to the fundamental virtues of man, which only
by struggle reveal themselves in the light of the sun. … War alone
brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of
nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it. … Fascism
believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.
It thus repudiates the doctrine of pacifism, which is born of
renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of
sacrifice.”

M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS’s second leader and its major ideological influence:

The core ideology of the RSS is heavily based on the writings of Golwalkar (1906-1973), specifically his book We or Our Nationhood Defined and the follow-up Bunch of Thoughts. The full text of both books is currently available online in English here and here.
Golwalkar wrote the first book in 1938, when RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar
appointed him RSS General Secretary. Golwalkar’s second book was
published in 1966. Golwalkar never retracted any of these statements,
not even after the horrors of the Holocaust.

(i) Extracts from We or Our Nationhood Defined:

(a) Promotes explicitly racial
Far-Right propaganda. Claims a “Nation” is based on 5 indivisible
factors: Race, Religion, Culture, Language and Geography; claims Race
and Religion are the dominant factors for the RSS:

”the idea contained in the word Nation is a compound of
five distinct factors fused into one indissoluble whole the famous five
“Unities” – Geographical (country), Racial (Race), Religious (Religion),
cultural (Culture) and linguistic (language).”

”It is superfluous to emphasis the importance of Racial
Unity in the Nation idea. A Race is a hereditary Society having common
customs, common language, common memories of glory or disaster; in
short, it is a population with a common origin under one culture. Such a
race is by far the important ingredient of a Nation. Even if there be
people of a foreign origin, they must have become assimilated into the
body of the mother race and inextricably fused into it. They should have
become one with the original national race, not only in its economic
and political life, but also in its religion, culture and language, for
otherwise such foreign races may be considered, under certain
circumstances, at best members of a common state for political purposes;
but they can never form part and parcel of the National body. If the
mother race is destroyed either by destruction of the persons composing
it or by loss of the principle of its existence, its religion and
culture, the nation itself comes to an end. We will not seek to prove
this axiomatic truth, that the Race is the body of the Nation, and that
with its fall, the Nation ceases to exist.”

“Where religion does not form a distinguishing factor,
culture together with the other necessary constituents of the Nation
idea become the important point in the making up of individual
Nationality. On the other hand in Hindusthan [India], religion is an
all-absorbing entity. Based as it is on the unshakable foundations of a
sound philosophy of life (as indeed Religion ought to be), it has become
eternally woven into the life of the Race, and forms, as it were, its
very Soul. With us, every action in life, individual, social or
political, is a command of Religion. We make war or peace, engage in
arts and crafts, amass wealth and give it away, indeed we are born and
we die-all in accord with religious injunctions. Naturally, therefore,
we are what our great Religion has made us. Our Race-spirit is a child
of our Religion and so with us. Culture is but a product of our
all-comprehensive Religion, a part of its body and not distinguishable
from it.”

“Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in
Hindusthan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been
gallantly fighting on to shake off the despoilers. . . . The Race Spirit
has been awakening.”

(b) Contempt for educated Hindus:

“This ‘educated’ class of Hindus became in truth slaves
of the English, as the late Dr S.V Ketkar has aptly described them. They
had cut their traces, lost their footing in the National past, and
become deculturized, denationalized people. But they also formed the
bulk of the ‘Congress’ and found no difficulty in eagerly gulping down
the extra-ordinary absurdity, that their country was not theirs, but
belonged to strangers and enemies of their Race equally with them.”

(c) Opposition to inclusive, pluralistic democracy and territory-based nationality:

“The idea was spread that for the first time the people
were going to live a National life, the Nation in the land naturally was
composed of all those who happened to reside therein and that all these
people were to unite on a common ‘National’ platform and win back
‘freedom’ by ‘Constitutional means’. Wrong notions of democracy
strengthened the view and we began to class ourselves with our old
invaders and foes under the outlandish name – Indian – and tried to win
them over to join hands with us in our struggle. The result of this
poison is too well known. We have allowed ourselves to be duped into
believing our foes to be our friends and with our hands are undermining
true Nationality.”

(d) Claims non-Hindus in India “deserve no privileges, not even citizen’s rights”:

“There are only two courses open to the foreign elements
[non-Hindus], either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt
its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may
allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the
national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities problem.
That is the only logical and correct solution.”

“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. We repeat: in Hindusthan, the land of the Hindus,
lives and should live the Hindu Nation – satisfying all the five
essential requirements of the scientific nation concept of the modern
world. Consequently only those movements are truly ‘National’ as aim at
re-building, revitalizing and emancipating from its present stupor, the
Hindu Nation. Those only are nationalist patriots, who, with the
aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and Nation next to their heart, are
prompted into activity and strive to achieve that goal. All others are
either traitors and enemies to the National cause, or, to take a
charitable view, idiots.

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 loose their
separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the
country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing,
deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even
citizen’s rights. There is, at least, should be, no other course for
them to adopt. We are an old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought
to and do deal, with the foreign races, who have chosen to live in our
country.”

(e) Glorifies Nazi Germany and the
persecution of Germany’s Jews, states that India should duplicate
Hitler’s treatment of minority populations:

“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture,
Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic
Races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here.
Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and
cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into
one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit
by.”

“To be brief, all the five constituents of the Nation
Idea have been boldly vindicated in modern Germany and that too, today
in the actual present, when we can for ourselves see and study them, as
they manifest themselves in their relative importance.”

(ii) Extracts from Bunch of Thoughts:

(a) Misrepresents and slanders Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

“In all those Semitic religions-Judaism, Christianity and
Islam-a single way of worship is prescribed for all. Those creeds have
but one prophet, one scripture and one God, other than whom there is no
path of salvation for the human soul. It requires no great intelligence
to see the absurdity of such a proposition.”

(b) Claims Hindus are differentiated from other religious groups before birth:

“Some wise men of today tell us that no man is born as
Hindu or Muslim or Christian but as a simple human being. This may be
true about others. But for a Hindu, he gets the first “samskar” when he
is still in the mother’s womb, and the last when his body is consigned
to the flames. There are sixteen “samaskars” for the Hindu which make
him what he is. In fact, we are Hindus even before we emerge from the
womb of our mother. We are therefore born as Hindus. About the others,
they are born to this world as simple unnamed human beings and later on,
either circumcised or baptized, they become Muslims or Christians.”

(c) Claims RSS aims to reconvert Indian Muslims and Christians:

“Everybody knows that only a handful of Muslims came here
as enemies and invaders. So, also, only a few foreign Christian
missionaries came here. Now the Muslims and Christians have enormously
grown in number…..it is our duty to call these our forlorn brothers,
suffering under religious slavery for centuries, back to their ancestral
home…..come back and identity themselves with their ancestral Hindu way
of life in dress, customs, performing marriage ceremonies and funeral
rites and such other things.”

“There are some people who claim that they have achieved
unity of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and all others on the political and
economic plane. But why limit the oneness only there? Why not make it
more wide and more comprehensive so as to fuse them all in the Hindu way
of life, in our dharma and take them back as lost brothers? To those
who speak of unity on the political and economic plane, we say that we
stand not only for political and economic unity but also for cultural
and religious unity.”

(d) Rejects Indian nationality of all Indian non-Hindus:

“They forgot that here was already a full-fledged ancient
nation of the Hindus and the various communities which were living in
the country were here either as guests, the Jews and Parsis, or as
invaders, the Muslims and Christians. They never faced the question how
all such heterogeneous groups could be called as children of the soil
merely because, by an accident, they happened to reside in a common
territory under the rule of a common enemy.”

(e) Reiterates opposition to territory-based nationality and Gandhi’s principle of Hindu-Muslim unity:

“Most of the tragedies and evils that have overtaken our
country during the last few decades and are even today corroding our
national life are its direct outcome…..In their phantom chase of
achieving new unity and new nationality, our [Congress] leaders raised
the slogan of ‘Hindu-Muslim unity’…..The first thing they preached was
that our nationality could not be called Hindu, that even our land could
not be called by its traditional name Hindusthan, as that would have
offended the Muslim. The name ‘India’ given by the British was accepted.
Taking that name, the ‘new nation’ was called the ‘Indian Nation’. And
the Hindu was asked to rename himself as ‘Indian’.

But here, we had leaders who were, as if, pledged to sap all
manliness from their own people. However, this is not a mere accident of
history. This leadership only came as a bitter climax of the despicable
tribe of so many of our ancestors who during the past twelve hundred
years sold their national honour and freedom to foreigners, and joined
hands with the inveterate enemies of our country [read: “Muslims”] and
our religion in cutting the throats of their own kith and kin to gratify
their personal egoism, selfishness and rivalry. No wonder nemesis
overtook such a people in the form of such a self-destructive
leadership.”

(f) Further examples of bigotry towards Muslims:

“They had come here as invaders. They were conceiving
themselves as conquerors and rulers here for the last twelve hundred
years. That complex was still in their mind. History has recorded that
their antagonism was not merely political. Had it been so, they could
have been won over in a very short time. But it was so deep-rooted that
whatever we believed in, the Muslim was wholly hostile to it. If we
worship in the temple, he would desecrate it. If we carry on bhajans and
car festivals, that would irritate him. If we worship cow, he would
like to eat it. If we glorify woman as a symbol of sacred motherhood, he
would like to molest her. He was tooth and nail opposed to our way of
life in all aspects – religious, cultural, social, etc. He had imbibed
that hostility to the very core.”

(g) Further examples of bigotry towards Christians:

“So far as the Christians are concerned, to a superficial
observer they appear not only quite harmless but as the very embodiment
of compassion and love for humanity! Their speeches abound in words
like ‘service’ and ‘human salvation’ as though they are specially
deputed by the Almighty to uplift humanity! They run schools and
colleges, hospitals and orphanages. The people of our country, simple
and innocent as they are, are taken in by all these things. But what is
the real and ulterior motive of Christians in pouring [tens of millions]
of rupees in all these activities?

…..the missionary who spoke next bluntly said, “If we had been
prompted to do all this by mere humanitarian considerations, why should
we have come all the way here? Why should we have spent so much money?
We are here for only one reason and that is to increase number of
followers of our Lord Jesus Christ.” They are very clear about it.

Towards that end they feel that any tactics, however foul, is fair.
The various surreptitious and mean tactics they employ for conversion
are all too well known.

….. What does all this mean? It means that all the people in this
country should be converted to Christianity. That is, their hereditary
religion, philosophy, culture and way of life should be demolished and
they should become absorbed in a world federation of Christianity.

….. Even St. Paul, the great disciple of Christ, has said, as quoted
by Lokamanya Tilak in his Gita Rahasya, “How can it be a sin if by
uttering falsehood I add to Your (God’s) Glory?”

….. Such is the role of Christian gentlemen residing in our land
today, out to demolish not only the religious and social fabric of our
life but also to establish political domination in various pockets and
if possible all over the land. Such has been, in fact, their role
wherever they have stepped-all under the alluring grab of bringing peace
and brotherhood to mankind under the angelic wings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus had called upon his followers to give their all to the poor, the
ignorant and the downtrodden. But what have his followers done in
practice? Wherever they have gone, they have proved to be not
‘blood-givers’ but ‘bloodsuckers’?

….. So long as the Christians here indulge in such activities and
consider themselves as agents of the international movement for the
spread of Christianity, and refuse to offer their first loyalty to the
land of their birth and behave as true children of the heritage and
culture of their ancestors, they will remain here as hostiles.”

(iii) RSS agenda is to “hold an empire without becoming emperor”:

Extract from The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour, by A.G. Noorani (further information here):

Golwalkar had bared the RSS’s ambitions and technique as
far back as 1949: “If the Congress completely disintegrates and anarchy
rules the country and there is nobody to take over…..we may sacrifice
part of our normal cultural activities and accept the responsibility.”
Asked point blank “Is it a fact that the Sangh plans to capture power?”,
he replied: “We have kept before ourselves the ideal of Bhagwan Shri
Krishna who held a big empire under his thumb but refused to become an
emperor himself”. Or, as Rajendra Singh [4th RSS leader] and Bhaurao
Deoras [RSS activist and brother of the 3rd RSS leader] said in Para 38
of their Application, ‘The RSS desires to dominate the world by cultural
conquest by a great process of true national regeneration’. The ideal
can be fully realized if the BJP, kept under the RSS thumb, captures
power as the ‘national alternative.’

Interestingly, the British had, after careful deliberation, made
sound assessment of the RSS. A circular sent by the Home Department of
the Government of India to the Bihar government (No. F 201/44 Ests.
Dated March 16, 1944) said: “After a protracted consideration of the
question in which the Governments of the C.E. and Berar and Bombay were
also consulted, as the organization was strongest there, it was decided
that the RSS was a politico-commercial organization which concentrated
on the formation of a militant body on fascist lines….”

The word fascist was aptly chosen. As Donald E. Smith says in his
classic “India as a Secular State” (1963): “The leader principle, the
stress on militarism, the doctrine of racial-cultural superiority,
ultra-nationalism infused with religious idealism, the use of symbols of
past greatness, the emphasis on national solidarity, the exclusion of
religious or ethnic minorities from the nation-concept — all of these
features of the RSS are highly reminiscent of fascist movements in
Europe.”

A.G. Noorani also writes:

So brutally candid is “We or Our Nationhood Defined” that
a desperate attempt was made by the RSS to distance itself from it –
the RSS claimed that the book was merely an English translation of the
Marathi work “Rashtra Meemansa” by Babarao G.D. Savarkar, brother of V.
D. Savarkar. However, in his Preface to “We or Our Nationhood Defined”
dated March 22, 1939, Golwalkar described “Rashtra Meemansa” as ‘one of
my chief sources of inspiration and help. An English translation of this
is due to be shortly out [sic].

Rajendra Singh and Bhaurao Deoras made an authoritative statement on
that book in Para 10 of their 1978 application: ‘With a view to give a
scientific base to propagate the idea India being (sic) historically
from time immemorial a Hindu Nation, late Shri M.S. Golwalkar had
written a book entitled, “We or Our Nationhood Defined”,’ In Para 7 they
‘placed on record’ his book “Bunch of Thoughts” (1966) in order ‘to
clarify and understand the true purpose, the exact nature, the ambit and
scope of the RSS work… and its activities.’

The RSS appeal thus affirmed the continuing validity and relevance of Golwalkar’s writings, specifically of those two books.

3. HITLER’S VIEWS ON INDIANS

The RSS’s deliberate emulation of various
aspects of Nazism is particularly ironic considering what the racist
white supremacist Hitler actually thought of Indians, including the
British colonial rule of India. The relevant Wikipedia page has an accurate and fully-referenced summary, which is quoted verbatim as follows:

Hitler’s views on India were disparaging.
He considered the British colonial rule of the subcontinent as an
exemplary one and intended the German rule in the occupied East to
resemble it. Hitler thought little of the Indian independence movement,
declaring the freedom fighters of being racially inferior “Asiatic
jugglers”. As early as 1930 he spoke of the Indian freedom movement as
the rebellion of the “lower Indian race against the superior English
Nordic race”, and that the British were free to deal with any subversive
Indian activists as they liked. In 1937 he told the British Foreign
Secretary Lord Halifax that the British should “shoot Gandhi, and if
this doesn’t suffice to reduce them to submission, shoot a dozen leading
members of the Congress, and if that doesn’t suffice shoot 200, and so
on, as you make it clear that you mean business.” During the same
discussion Hitler reportedly told Halifax that one of his favorite films
was The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, because it depicted a handful of “superior race” Britons holding sway over an entire continent.

******************************************************************

FURTHER INFORMATION

(a) As discussed above, May 2014 will be
the date when RSS member & “Hindutva”/“Hindu Nationalism” proponent
Narendra Modi will probably become India’s next Prime Minister. May 2014
is also the 50th anniversary of the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, who was
one of Mahatma Gandhi’s closest friends & allies, a senior leader of
the mainstream Indian independence movement, and independent India’s
first Prime Minister. Depending on one’s perspective, the timing is
either an interesting coincidence or it tragically symbolises what is
about to occur.

(b) The information in this article
should not be exploited by anyone to denigrate India & Indians in
general, Hindus en masse or the religion of Hinduism as a whole; both as
a Sikh and as an individual, I have a zero-tolerance policy towards
racial & religious bigotry, regardless of the source and regardless
of the target.

(c) For interested readers and for future reference, contact details for the International Criminal Court at The Hague are available here. Details on atrocities which the ICC defines as crimes against humanity are available here. It is also worth noting that the United Nations Security Council has adopted multiple resolutions
during the past decade in which it has reaffirmed its responsibility to
protect people from genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity; furthermore, one of these resolutions also states that rape
and other forms of sexual violence can constitute crimes against
humanity or “a constitutive act with respect to genocide”.

(d) Contact details for the US Department of State are available here. The US Department of State’s Twitter address is @StateDept.

(e) Contact details for US Secretary of State John Kerry are available here. John Kerry’s Twitter address is @JohnKerry.

(f) Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison
and Republican Congressman Joe Pitts have been leading American
bipartisan efforts to oppose Narendra Modi. They have jointly introduced
a bipartisan Congressional resolution
urging the US Government to continue denying a visa to Modi on the
grounds of religious freedom violations. They have also jointly
introduced a bipartisan Congressional resolution
on the protection of religious minorities in India, which includes
calls for specific actions to be taken by the US State Department; the
complete text of the resolution is available in PDF form online here.

Congressman Keith Ellison’s Twitter address is @keithellison. Congressman Joe Pitts’s Twitter address is @RepJoePitts.

(g) Contact details for the British Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office are available here. The FCO’s Twitter address is @foreignoffice.

(h) The Twitter address of Baroness
Sayeeda Warsi, Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office and Minister for Faith and Communities, is @SayeedaWarsi.

(i) Contact details for the British Government’s Home Office are available here. The Home Office’s Twitter address is @ukhomeoffice.

(j) The Twitter address of Keith Vaz, Chairman of the British Government’s Home Affairs Select Committee, is @Keith_VazMP.

Source: http://www.loonwatch.com/2014/04/nazism-and-narendra-modi-the-ideological-influence-on-indias-next-prime-minister/

Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s

Archival Evidence

To understand militant Hinduism, one
must examine its domestic roots as well as foreign influence. In the
1930s Hindu nationalism borrowed from European fascism to transform
‘different’ people into ‘enemies’. Leaders of militant Hinduism
repeatedly

expressed their admiration for
authoritarian leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler and for the fascist
model of society. This influence continues to the present day. This
paper presents archival evidence on the would-be collaborators.

‘Fascist’ was in Sumit Sarkar’s words, “till the other day a mere epithet”

(‘The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar’, Economic and Political Weekly,
January 30, 1993, p 163). It has come to define the ideology and
practice of the Hindu militant organisations. It is a commonplace,
accepted by their opponents, as well as by those who have a critical,
but not necessarily negative, view of Hindu fundamentalism. Defining the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and, in general, the organisations of
militant Hinduism ¹ as undemocratic, with authoritarian,
paramilitary, radical, violent tendencies and a sympathy for fascist
ideology and practice, has been a major concern for many politically
oriented scholars and writers. This has been the case with the
literature which started with Gandhi’s assassination and continues up to
the present day with works such as Amartya Sen’s India at Risk (The New York Review of Books, April 1993) and Christophe Jaffrelot’s The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (Viking, New Delhi, 1996), the latest book published on the subject, or the well known Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags
(Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1993), which came out soon after the
destruction of the Babri masjid. As a result, the fascist ideological
background of Hindu fundamentalism is taken for granted, never proved by
systematic analysis. This is an outcome that is, to a certain extent,
explained by the fact that most of the abovementioned authors are
political scientists and not historians.

It is a fact that many of those who
witnessed the growth of Hindu radical forces in the years around the
second world war were already convinced of the Sangh’s fascist outlook.
Particularly acute was the perception that the Congress had of these
organisations and their character. There is no need to mention the
already well known opinion of Nehru, who, right

MARZIA CASOLARI

from the beginning, had pointed at these
organisations as communalist and fascist. Less well known is the fact
that, as shown by a confidential report circulated within the Congress
most probably at the time of the first ban of the RSS, after Gandhi’s
assassination, the similarity between the character of the RSS and that
of fascist organisations was already taken for granted. In fact, the
report itself states that the RSS

• …Started in Nagpur some sort of Hindu Boys Scout movement. Gradually
  it developed into a communal militarist organisation with violent
  tendencies.
• The RSS has been purely Maharashtrian brahmin organisation. The
  non-brahmin Maharashtrians who constitute the bulk of C P and
  Maharashtra have no sympathy with it.
• Even in the other provinces the chief organisers and whole-time workers will be found to be inevitably Maharashtrian brahmins.
• Through the RSS the Maharashtrian brahmins have been dreaming of
  establishing in India ‘a Peshwa Raj’ after the withdrawal of Britishers.
  The RSS flag is the Bhagwa Flag of the Peshwas –

Maharashtrian rulers [who] were the last
to be conquered by the British – and after the termination of British
rule in India, the Maharashtrians should be vested with political
powers.

• The RSS practises secret and violent methods which promote
  ‘fascism’. No regard is paid to truthful means and constitutional
  methods.
• There is no constitution of the organisation; its aims and objects
  have never been clearly defined. The general public is usually told that
  its aim is only physical training, but the real aims are not conveyed
  even to the rank and file of the RSS members. Only its ‘inner circle’ is
  taken into a confidence.
• There are no records or proceedings of the RSS organisation, no
  membership registers are maintained. There are also no records of its
  income and the expenditure.

The RSS is thus strictly secret as
regards its organisation. It has consequently… ( National Archives of
India (NAI), Sardar Patel Correspondence, microfilm, reel no 3 , ‘A Note
on the RSS’, undated ).

Unfortunately the document stops abruptly
here, but it contains enough evidence of the reputation the RSS already
had by the late 1940s.

This document, however, is by no means
exceptional. An accurate search of the primary sources produced by the
organisations of Hindu nationalism, as well as by their opponents and by
the police, is bound to show the extent and the importance of the
connections between such organisations and Italian fascism. In fact the
most important organisations of Hindu nationalism not only adopted
fascist ideas in a conscious and deliberate way, but this happened also
because of the existence of direct contacts between the representatives
of the main Hindu organisations and fascist Italy.

To demonstrate this, I will reconstruct
the context from which arose the interest of Hindu radicalism in Italian
fascism right from the early 1920s. This interest was commonly shared
in Maharashtra, and must have inspired B S Moonje’s trip to Italy in
1931. The next step will be to examine the effects of that trip, namely
how B S Moonje tried to transfer fascist models to Hindu society and to
organise it militarily, according to fascist patterns. An additional aim
of this paper is to show how, about the end of the 1930s, the
admiration for the Italian regime was commonly shared by the different
streams of Hindu nationalism and the main Hindu leaders.

Particular attention will be devoted to
the attitude adopted by the main Hindu organisations during the second
world war. During those crucial years, Hindu nationalism seemed to
uneasily oscillate between a conciliatory attitude towards the British,
and a sympathy for the dictators. This is in fact far from surprising
because – as will be shown – in those years, militant Hindu
organisations were preparing and arming themselves to fight the
so-called internal enemies, rather than the British. More generally, the
aim of this paper is to disprove Christophe Jaffrelot’s thesis that
there is a sharp distinction between nazi and fascist ideology on one
side and RSS on the other as far as the concept of race and the
centrality of the leader are concerned.²

I

Hindu Nationalists and Italian Fascism

None of the works mentioned above,
Jaffrelot’s included, deals with what I consider a most important
problem, namely, the existence of direct contacts between the
representatives of the fascist regime, including Mussolini and Hindu
nationalists. These contacts demonstrate that Hindu nationalism had much
more than an abstract interest in the ideology and practice of fascism.

The interest of Indian Hindu nationalists
in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an
occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals, rather, it should
be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu
nationalists, especially in

Maharashtra, focused on Italian
dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be an example
of conservative revolution. This concept was discussed at length by the
Marathi press, right from the early phase of the Italian regime.

From 1924 to 1935 Kesari
regularly published editorials and articles about Italy, fascism and
Mussolini. What impressed the Marathi journalists was the socialist
origin of fascism and the fact that the new regime seemed to have
transformed Italy from a backward country to a first class power.
Indians could not know, then, that, behind the demagogic rhetoric of the
regime, there was very little substance.

Moreover, the Indian observers were
convinced that fascism had restored order in a country previously upset
by political tensions. In a series of editorials, Kesari described
the passage from liberal government to dictatorship as a shift from
anarchy to an orderly situation, where social struggles had no more
reason to exist.³ The Marathi newspaper gave considerable
space to the political reforms carried out by Mussolini, in particular
the substitution of the election of the members of parliament with their
nomination (ibid, January 17, 1928) and the replacement of parliament
itself with the Great Council of Fascism. Mussolini’s idea was the
opposite of that of democracy and it was expressed by the dictator’s
principle, according to which ‘one man’s government is more useful and
more binding’ for the nation than the democratic institutions (ibid,
July 17, 1928).⁴ Is all this not reminiscent of the principle of ‘obedience to one leader’ (‘ek chalak anuvartitva’) followed by the RSS?

Finally, a long article of August 13,
1929, ‘Italy and the Young Generations’, stated that the Italian young
generation had succeeded the old one to lead the country. That had
resulted in the ‘fast ascent of Italy in every field’. The article went
on to describe at length the organisation of the Italian society
according to fascist models. The principal reasons of the discipline of
the Italian youths were strong religious feelings, widespread among the
population, attachment to the family, and the respect of traditional
values: no divorce, no singles, no right to vote for women, whose only
duty was to sit at home, by the fireplace. The article focused then on
the fascist youth organisations, the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.

One may wonder how the Indian journalists
could be so well informed about what was going on in Italy. Very
possibly, among their sources there was a pamphlet in English, published
by an Italian editor in 1928, entitled The Recent Laws for the Defence of the State
(copy in NAI, Foreign and Political Department, 647G, 1927).
Emphasised, right from the beginning, was the importance of the National
Militia, defined as “the bodyguard of the revolution”. The booklet
continued with the description of the restrictive measures adopted by
the regime: a ban on the “subversive parties”, limitations to the press,
expulsion of “disaffected persons” from public posts, and, finally, the
death sentence.

Significantly, the shift from the liberal
phase to fascism is described by the pamphlet in strikingly similar
terms to those employed by the above-mentioned articles:

This step [the shift to fascism] has
struck a death blow to the thread-bare theories of Italian liberalism,
according to which the sovereign state must observe strict neutrality
towards all political associations and parties. This theory explains why
in Italy the ship of state was drifting before the wind, ready to sink
in the vortex of social dissolution or to be wrecked on the rocks of
financial disaster.

Another inspiring source of the literature published in Kesari
must have been the work by D V Tahmankar, the correspondent of the
Marathi newspaper from London and admirer of the Italian dictator. In
1927 Tahmankar published a book entitled Muslini ani Fashismo,
(Mussolini and Fascism), a biography of the dictator, with several
references to the organisation of the fascist state, to the fascist
social system, to the fascist ideology, and to Italy’s recent past. An
entire chapter, the last, was devoted to description of fascist society
and its institutions, especially the youth organisations.

One can easily come to the conclusion
that, by the late 1920s, the fascist regime and Mussolini had
considerable popularity in Maharashtra. The aspects of fascism which
appealed most to Hindu nationalists were, of course, both the
militarisation of society and what was seen as the real transformation
of society, exemplified by the shift from chaos to order. The
antidemocratic system was considered as a positive alternative to
democracy which was seen as a typically British value.

Such literature made an implicit
comparison between fascism and the Italian Risorgimento. The latter’s
influence on Indian nationalism, both moderate and radical, is well
known.⁵ However, whereas the Risorgimento appealed to both
moderates and extremists, fascism appealed only to the radicals, who
considered it as the continuation of the Risorgimento and a phase of the
rational organisation of the state. 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).⁶ 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.

He continues describing drills and uniforms:

I was charmed to see boys and girls well
dressed in their naval and military uniforms undergoing simple exercises
of physical training and forms of drill.

Definitely more meaningful is the report
of the meeting with Mussolini. On the same day, March 19, 1931 at 3 pm,
in Palazzo Venezia, the headquarters of the fascist government, he met
the Italian dictator. The meeting is recorded in the diary on March 20,
and it is worth reproducing the complete report.

…As soon as I was announced at the door, he got up and walked up to receive me.

I shook hands with him saying that I am
Dr Moonje. He knew everything about me and appeared to be closely
following the events of the Indian struggle for freedom. He seemed to
have great respect for Gandhi. He sat down in front of me on another
chair in front of his table and was conversing with me for quite half an
hour. He asked me about Gandhi and his movement and pointedly asked me a
question “If the Round Table Conference will bring about peace between
India and England”. I said that if the British would honestly desire to
give us equal status with other dominions of the Empire, we shall have
no objection to remain peacefully and loyally within the Empire;
otherwise the struggle will be renewed and continued. Britain will gain
and be able to maintain her premier position amongst the European Nation
(sic) if India is friendly and peaceful towards her and India
cannot be so unless she is given Dominion Status on equal terms with
other Dominions. Signor Mussolini appeared impressed by this remark of
mine. Then he asked me if I have visited the University. I said I am
interested in the military training of boys and have been visiting the
Military Schools of England, France and Germany. I have now come to
Italy for the same purpose and I am very grateful to say that the
Foreign Office and the War Office have made good arrangements for my
visiting these schools. I just saw this morning and afternoon the
Balilla and the Fascist Organisations and I was much impressed. Italy
needs them for her development and prosperity. I do not see anything
objectionable though I have been frequently reading in the newspapers
not very friendly criticisms about them and about your Excellency also.
Signor Mussolini: What is your opinion about them?

Dr Moonje: Your Excellency, I am much
impressed. Every aspiring and growing Nation needs such organisations.
India needs them most for her military regeneration. During the British
Domination of the last 150 years Indians have been waved away from the
military profession but India now desires to prepare herself for
undertaking the responsibility for her own defence and I am working for
it. I have already started an organisation of my own, conceived
independently with similar objectives. I shall have no hesitation to
raise my voice from the public platform both in India and England when
occasion may arise in praise of your Balilla and Fascist organisations. I
wish them good luck and every success.

Signor Mussolini – who appeared very
pleased – said – Thanks but yours is an uphill task. However I wish you
every success in return.

Saying this he got up and I also got up to take his leave.

The description of the Italian journey
includes information regarding fascism, its history, the fascist
‘revolution’, etc, and continues for two more pages.

One can wonder at the association between
B S Moonje and the RSS, but if we think that Moonje had been Hedgewar’s
mentor, the association will be much clearer.⁷ The intimate
friendship between Moonje and Hedgewar and the former’s declared
intention to strengthen the RSS and to extend it as a nationwide
organisation prove a strict connection between Moonje and the RSS.
Moreover, it makes sense to think that the entire circle of militant
Hinduism must have been influenced by Moonje’s Italian experience.

II

Moonje’s Plans for

Militarising Hindus

Once Moonje was back in India, he kept
the promise made in his diary and started immediately to work for the
foundation of his military school and for the militant reorganisation of
Hindu society in Maharashtra. He really did not waste time, for, as
soon as he reached Pune, he gave an interview to The Mahratta.⁸
Regarding the military reorganisation of the Hindu community, he
stressed the necessity to ‘indianise’ the army and expressed the hope
that conscription would become compulsory and an Indian would be put in
charge of the defence ministry. He finally made a clear reference to the
Italian and German examples:

In fact, leaders should imitate the youth
movement of Germany and the Balilla and Fascist organisations of Italy.
I think they are eminently suited for introduction in India, adapting
them to suit the special conditions. I have been very much impressed by
these movements and I have seen their activities with my own eyes in all
details.

Soon fascism became a subject of public
debate and Hedgewar himself was among the promoters of a campaign in
favour of the militarisation of society, according to fascist patterns.
On January 31, 1934 , Hedgewar presided over a conference about fascism
and Mussolini, organised by Kavde Shastri. Moonje made the concluding
speech (NMML, Moonje papers, microfilm, Diary, rn 2, 1932-36).

A few months later, on March 31, 1934
Moonje, Hedgewar and Laloo Gokhale had a meeting, the subject of which
was again the military organisation of the Hindus, along Italian and
German lines:

Laloo – Well you are the president of the
Hindu Sabha and you are preaching Sanghathan of Hindus. It is ever
possible for Hindus to be organised?

I said – You have asked me a question of
which exactly I was thinking of late. I have thought out a scheme based
on Hindu Dharm Shastra which provides for standardisation of Hinduism
throughout India…But the point is that this ideal cannot be brought to
effect unless we have our own swaraj with a Hindu as a dictator like
Shivaji of old or Mussolini or Hitler of the present day in Italy and
Germany…But this does not mean that we have to sit with folded hands
untill (sic) some such dictator arises in India. We should formulate a scientific scheme and carry on propaganda for it (NMML, ibid).

The intimate connection between Moonje
and the RSS and the fascist character of the latter is confirmed by
British sources. An Intelligence report published in 1933 and entitled
‘Note on the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh’, ascribed to Moonje the
responsibility of the reorganisation of the Sangh in the Marathi
speaking districts and in the Central Provinces in 1927. The report,
describing the activity and the character of the RSS, warned that

It is perhaps no exaggeration to assert
that the Sangh hopes to be in future India what the ‘Fascisti’ are to
Italy and the ‘Nazis’ to Germany (NAI, Home Poll Department, 88/33,
1933).

Summing up, contrary to Jaffrelot’s
interpretation, it is clear that the Hindu nationalists were very much
attracted by the figure of a strong leader. Moreover, they were keen to
give their organisation a strongly centralised structure.

Moonje’s trip to Italy, contrary to what
happened in the case of Subhas Chandra Bose and other nationalists, did
not give place to any further co-operation between Hindu nationalism and
the fascist regime. However, these contacts were important at the
ideological and organisational levels. In fact, Moonje kept his promise
to improve military education in India and, as soon as he came back from
his European trip, he started to contact all those who could support
his idea of militarising Hindu society. In 1934, Moonje started to work
for the foundation of his own institution, the Bhonsla Military School.⁹
For this purpose, in the same year he began to work at the foundation
of the Central Hindu Military Education Society, whose aim was to bring
about military regeneration of the Hindus and to fit Hindu youths for
undertaking the entire responsibility for the defence of their
motherland.

to educate them in the ‘Sanatan Dharma’,
and to train them “in the science and art of personal and national
defence” (NMML, Moonje papers, subject files, n 24, 1932-36, ‘The
Central Military Education Society’, undated, probably written in 1935).
Moonje’s programme was therefore entirely devoted to Hindu society, and
not to Indian society as a whole.

It is possible that the other function of
the society was that of facilitating the diffusion of military
education and supporting the foundation of new schools. During the
preliminary work for the foundation of both the school and society,
Moonje publicly admitted that his idea of militarily reorganising Hindu
society was inspired by the ‘military training schools of England,
France, Germany and Italy” (NMML, Moonje papers, subject files, n 23,
1934-36, report of the progress of the work of the society from January
1, 1935 to August 15, 1936). Moreover, there is an explicit reference to
fascist Italy and nazi Germany in a document that Moonje circulated
among those influential personalities who were expected to support the
foundation of the school (NMML, Moonje papers, subject files, n 25,
1935, ‘Preface to the Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and
Its Military School’). It said at the outset:

This training is meant for qualifying and
fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men with the
ambition of winning victory with the best possible casualties (sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the adversary.

Moonje does not give any clear-cut
indication regarding this ‘adversary’, whether it was the external
enemy, the British, or the ‘historical’ internal enemy, the Muslims. The
document continues with a long dissertation on the relation between
violence and non-violence. In it are drawn many examples from Indian
history and Hindu holy books, all in favour of organised violence, in
the form of militarism. On the contrary, non-violence is considered a
form of renunciation and cowardice.

Moonje’s views corresponded almost perfectly with Mussolini’s opinions:

…The same thought is repeated though in a
more forceful and direct language by Signor Mussolini, the maker of
modern Italy. When he says: “Our desire for peace and collaboration with
Europe is based on millions of steel bayonets.”

And again, from Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism,

I absolutely disbelieve in perpetual
peace which is detrimental and negative to the fundamental virtues of
man, which only by struggle reveal themselves in the light of the sun,

War alone brings up to its highest
tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples
who have the courage to meet it,

Fascism believes neither in the
possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the
doctrine of pacifism which is born of renunciation of the struggle and
an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice.

Moonje added that these considerations
did not aim at the legitimation of a climate of civil war. Contrary to
the Indian situation, where the British were responsible for the
maintenance of public order, peace should rise from the self-defence of a
militarily organised nation. Italy and Germany could offer a further
example:

His Majesty, the King of Italy, says:
“Italy wants the longest possible period of peace but the greatest
guarantee for a peace is the efficiency of the Italian armed forces. The
government was striving to augment the efficiency of forces, which
depends upon the cadres, materials and the unity of command. Efforts
must be made to improve the physique of the Italian youths and their
preliminary training in order to raise the level of soldierly
efficiency.”

As far as Germany was concerned, Moonje quoted a booklet entitled Wehrwissenschaft (Military Science), written by Ewald Banse, a professor at the Brunswick Technical High School:

“The starting point of the book is that
war is inevitable and certain and that it is imperative to know as much
about it and to be as efficient as possible … the mind of the nation,
from childhood on must be impregnated and familiarised with the idea of
war”, because, the Professor says: “The dying warrior dies more easily
when he knows that his blood is ebbing for his national god.”

The spirit of the last sentence is surprisingly coincident with the essence of the Hindu nationalism.

When Moonje had to indicate practical
ways of militarising Hindu society, he returned again to the example of
Italy and its military and paramilitary organisations, and reported what
he had seen. He described in detail the structure of the ‘She Wolf’s
Children’, the Balilla and the Avanguardisti. He asserted that these
organisations could provide paramilitary training to the male population
from the age of 8 up to 18, when the youth became young fascists. Italy
was therefore in a position of having “command of 6,000,000 trained and
disciplined men ready to face any emergency”.

The result was that

The Balillas are taught to build up moral character and take the first steps towards becoming soldiers.

As a consequence,

There will thus be no longer any distinction between the citizen and the soldier between the civilian and the man in uniform.

Of course, nowadays we know that, in
spite of this remarkable number of militarily trained citizens, Italy
lost the war: Moonje did not know that the level of the training was
low, the cohesion between people poor, and the fascist faith of the
people skin-deep.

Fascist ideas were widespread among Hindu
nationalists, at least in Maharashtra. The above-mentioned script had
been printed in the form of a pamphlet (copy in NAI, Jayakar papers,
microfilm, fn6, rn2) and distributed not only among the people Moonje
tried to involve in his project, but, most probably, to an even wider
public. Fascism therefore, had a certain popularity, which,
unfortunately, is at present difficult to measure.

III

Eve of Second World War

After Moonje’s trip to Italy there was no
further direct contact between exponents of the main Hindu
organisations and the Italian government. However, by the end of the
1930s Italian representatives in India established some connections with
the extremist fringes of Hindu nationalism. The Italian consulate in
Bombay was very active in seeking contacts with the local political
milieu. The Italian diplomatic mission in Bombay was part of a network
linking the Italian consulates in Bombay and Calcutta with the radical
movements of Maharashtra and Bengal (author’s PhD thesis, pp 276-79).

From June 1938 the consulate in Bombay
started to ‘recruit’ as many Indian students as possible for Italian
language courses, with the purpose of indoctrinating them with
propaganda in favour of Italy and fascism. The person in charge of this
activity was Mario Carelli, sent from Rome with the specific purpose of
organising and managing the Italian activities in Bombay. Mario Carelli
was secretary and librarian at the Institute for Middle and Far East
(ISMEO), founded in Rome in 1933 under the auspices of the Italian
government, and presided by Giovanni Gentile.¹⁰ Among the students, one Madhav

Kashinath Damley was particularly promising. Following Carelli’s suggestion, Damley translated into Marathi Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism
and, in summer 1939, published it as a series of articles in a weekly
he founded in June of the same year. The name of the magazine was Lokhandi Morcha (Iron Front). It published also, as a five parts article, a booklet by Antonio Pagliaro entitled II Fascismo contro il comunismo (Fascism against Communism) and an article by Mario Carelli entitled ‘The Institution of the

House of the Fasci and Corporations’.¹¹

In the autumn of 1939, a particularly radical article published in the Lokhandi Morcha
attracted the attention of the police. The result was that Damley, who
had already been noticed by the agents, was forced to suspend the
magazine and pay a fine. The refusal to pay determined the cessation of
the publication of the Lokhandi Morcha. Damley was a chitpavan
brahmin from Pune, resident in Bombay. His father owned the printing
house where the magazine was printed. According to the police,

He [Damley] holds extreme political views
and believes himself to be a follower of B G Tilak…He openly says that
he is enamoured of the history of Italy and Nazi Germany (MSA, Home
Special Department, 830(I)1939, note dated July 11, 1939).

Even more meaningful is Damley’s description by the Italian consul:

Holding fascist ideas, he founded an
organisation called Iron Guards, modelled on ours, but adapted to Indian
peculiar conditions.

He and his friends wore the black shirt: India’s first black shirts.

The development of this organisation was compromised by the outbreak of the war.¹²

The influence of fascist ideology and
practice must have gone far beyond the limits of the main organisations
of Hindu militant nationalism and must have extended to the wide and
intricate net of secondary militant groups and centres of physical
education or paramilitary training. This is shown by the example of the
Swastik League, founded on March 10, 1929 by M R Jayakar – who became
its president – and by other local personalities. In organising the
Swastik League, Jayakar, who had a prominent position within the Hindu
Mahasabha, drew some inspiration from the fascist paramilitary
organisations. In his own words,

in the near future, our GOC… intends to
form a cadet corps, consisting of boys between the age of 15 and 18
years. The training which these cadets will receive will ultimately
enable them to join the League’s volunteer corps…

This reminds us of a picture published in the Sunday Chronicle
on the 28th instant, showing two of Sgr Mussolini’s “Baby Soldiers”
remaining on sentry duty at the entrance of their annual encampment at
Camp Dux, where the young members of the Avan Guardista, (sic) a
youth organisation of Italy for boys from 14 to 18 years of age, get
first hand acquaintance with the tools of war. Neither we nor our cadets
can expect to be able to get such a direct training, but all the same,
the efforts to train a boy in military discipline will never be wasted
and will in course of time make that boy an ideal volunteer (NAI,
Jayakar papers, microfilm, rn 13, Swastik Herald, of November 7, 1934).

In 1940, when nazism manifested its real
nature and the swastika became an inauspicious symbol, the organisation
felt obliged to dissociate from nazism:

Hitler discriminates between Aryans and
non-Aryans, between Germans and Jews. The League, though it is a purely
Hindu organisation, does not make a difference between the Hindus and
the non-Hindus… Hitler has many enemies, the League cannot have any. He
is revengeful; the League is forgiving and tolerant. He is violent and
wild; the League is not. He thinks and acts in terms of destruction. He
has destroyed many families, many nations: nay, the peace of the world.
Armed to teeth he is running amuck. The League stands for construction.
He is an enemy of humanity. The League is a saviour of humanity. It has
saved thousands of human lives. Its ambulance is most efficient (NAI,
ibid, Article entitled ‘Hitler and the Swastik League’ in Swastik Herald, July-August 1940).

IV Savarkar and Nazism

At this point we have to dwell on the crucial problem of Savarkar’s position vis-a-vis the European radical right.

With Savarkar’s coming on the political
scene, from the late 1930s to the second world war, there was the
attempt, even if timid and unsuccessful, to search for new contacts with
the totalitarian regimes. At the same time, there was an
intensification of cries in favour or in defence of Italian and German
policy, even if the preference for Germany increased progressively.

Savarkar was declared president of the
Hindu Mahasabha as soon as he was released in 1937, and he held that
office until 1942. His presidentship covered the most sensitive period
of both Indian and international history in this century. According to
the commonly accepted opinion – supported by the organisations of
militant Hinduism – the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha have never been
particularly close, and, during Savarkar’s presidentship, they severed
their links. Reality, however, seems to be different. In fact, the
available documentation shows not only that such a split never happened,
but that the two organisations always had close connections. We should
not forget that Hedgewar had been secretary to the Hindu Mahasabha from
1926 to 1931 (NAI, Home Poll Department, August 28, 1942; intelligence
report ‘Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh’, dated March 7, 1942).¹³
The RSS seems to have provided support to the Hindu Mahasabha, as shown
by the fact that groups of RSS militants used to gather at the public
meetings organised to celebrate Savarkar’s release.¹⁴

Two of the main topics of the speeches
Savarkar gave at the gatherings organised in his honour and at any other
public function of his party were the international situation and
Hindu-Muslim relations.

Regarding the first aspect, Savarkar had a
rather cynical view of the relations India should entertain at the
international level. He returned to freedom and entered into politics at
the time of the formation of the Rome-Berlin Axis and Japan’s adhesion
to the pact. Such an outcome was favourably assessed by Hindu radical
nationalism, including the Hindu Mahasabha.

‘India’s foreign policy’ was the subject
of a speech Savarkar gave to about 20,000 people in Pune on August 1,
1938. The following are the most meaningful parts of the speech,
according to a press note issued by the Bombay office of the Hindu
Mahasabha:¹⁵

He observed India’s foreign policy must
not depend on “isms”. Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and
Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of
governments were imperative and beneficial to them under the conditions
that obtained there. Bolshevism might have suited Russia and Democracy
as it is obtained in Briton (sic) to the British people.

Political systems correspond then to the
nature of the respective population. This theory was clearly inspired by
a deterministic conception of race, similar to the conception of race
then dominant in Europe.

Starting a controversy with Nehru,
Savarkar openly defended the authoritarian powers of the day,
particularly Italy and, even more so, Germany:

Who are we to dictate to Germany, Japan
or Russia or Italy to choose a particular form of policy of government
simply because we woo it out of academical attraction? Surely Hitler
knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best. The very
fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so
powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is
enough to prove that those political “isms” were the most congenial
tonics their health demanded.

India may choose or reject particular
form of government, in accordance with her political requirements. But
Pandit went out of his way when he took sides in the name of all Indians
against Germany or Italy. Pandit Nehru might claim to express the
Congress section in India at the most. But it should be made clear to
the German, Italian, or Japanese public that crores of Hindu
Sanghatanists in India whom neither Pandit Nehru nor the Congress
represents, cherish no ill-will towards Germany or Italy or Japan or any
other country in the world simply because they had chosen a form of
government or constitutional policy which they though (sic) suited best
and contributed most to their national solidarity and strength.

Savarkar went on to defend Germany’s position regarding the Sudeten problem:

…as far as the Czechoslovakia question
was concerned the Hindu Sanghatanists in India hold that Germany was
perfectly justified in uniting the Austrian and Sudeten Germans under
the German flag. Democracy itself demanded that the will of the people
must prevail in choosing their own government. Germany demanded
plebiscite, the Germans under the Czechs wanted to join their kith and
kin in Germany. It was the Czechs who were acting against the principle
of democracy in holding the Germans under a foreign sway against their
will…Now that Germany is strong why should she not strike to unite all
Germans and consolidate them into a Pan-German state and realise the
political dream which generations of German people cherished.

When the outbreak of the second world war
was imminent, Savarkar openly declared the attitude Hindu Mahasabha
should adopt towards the other nations:

Any nation who helps India or is friendly
towards her struggle for freedom is our friend. Any Nation which
opposes us or pursues a policy inimical to us is our foe. Towards those
who do neither, India must maintain an attitude of perfect neutrality
refusing to poke her nose unnecessarily into their internal or external
policy.

This document summarises Savarkar’s view
regarding international problems and, at the same time, it contains the
future lines of the Hindu Mahasabha foreign policy. This party
elaborated its foreign policy only with Savarkar’s presidentship,
imitating, in a certain sense, what Nehru did within the Congress, but
choosing different allies among the foreign powers. Given the content of
the above-mentioned speech, it is no wonder that it was published on
November 30, 1938 by a famous

German daily, the Volkischer Beobachter ( NMML, Savarkar papers, microfilm, rn 1 part 2, March 1937-May 1938).

The reference to the German minorities in
Czechoslovakia was an implicit comparison with the Indian situation. As
Savarkar asserted in a speech in the presence of some 4,000 people at
Pune on October 11, 1938, if a plebiscite had taken place in India,
Muslims would have chosen to unite with Muslims and Hindus with Hindus.
This was a consequence of the principle according to which it was not
enough living together for a few centuries to form a nation, as “The
common desire to form a nation was essential for the formation of a
nation” (MSA, Home Special Department, 60D(g) Pt II, 1937, ‘Extract from
the weekly confidential report of the District Magistrate, dated the
October 21, 1938). During Savarkar’s presidentship the antiMuslim
rhetoric became more and more radical, and distinctly unpleasant. It was
a rhetoric that made continuous reference to the way Germany was
managing the Jewish question. Indeed, speech after speech, Savarkar
supported Hitler’s antiJewish policy, and, on October 14, 1938, he
suggested the following solution for the Muslim problem in India:

A Nation is formed by a majority living
therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were
driven out from Germany (MSA, Home Special

Department, 60 D(g) Pt III, 1938, ‘Translation of the verbatim speech made by V D Savarkar at Malegaon on October 14, 1938).

Then, towards the end of the year in
Thane, in front of RSS militants and local sympathisers, right at the
time when the Congress expressed its resolution against

Germany,¹⁶ Savarkar stated
that in Germany the movement of the Germans is the national movement but
that of the Jews is a communal one (MSA, Home Special Department, 60
D(g) Pt III, 1938, ‘A report on the meeting held on December 11, 1938).

And again the next year, on July 29, in Pune, he said:

Nationality did not depend so much on a
common geographical area as on unity of thought, religion, language and
culture. For this reason the Germans and the Jews could not be regarded
as a nation (MSA, ibid, ‘Extract from the BP weekly letter n 31, dated
August 5, 1939).

Without this unity, not even Muslims and
Hindus could be regarded as belonging to the same nation. Indian Muslims
should rather resign themselves to be considered as a minority, the
recognition of whose rights should depend on the magnanimity of the
majority.

Finally, at the end of 1939, on the
occasion of the 21st session of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar made one
of the most explicit comparisons between the Muslim question in India
and the Jewish problem in Germany:

…the Indian Muslims are on the whole more
inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims
outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany.¹⁷

One can find a certain continuity between the ideas of nation and nationhood expressed in Savarkar’s Hindutva¹⁸ and the content of these declarations. Indeed in his book, Savarkar, referring to the

Muslims, asserted that their holyland is
far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and godmen, ideas and
heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and
their outlook smack of foreign origin (Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, 4th ed, Bharat Mudranalaya, Pune, 1949, p 94).

A feeling of admiration for the Jewish
policy of Germany seems to have been shared by the entire circle of
Hindu nationalism at the end of the 1930s. In We, or Our Nationhood Defined, Golwarkar, who would have become general secretary of the RSS a year later, declared that

German national pride has now become the
topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture,
Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic
races – the Jews. National 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 mot [?], to be assimilated
into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and
profit by (Nagpur, 1939, p 37).

This had its roots in the idea that being
a Hindu was a matter of race and blood, not only a matter of culture.
In turn that was an idea which was strikingly similar to the racial
myths elaborated in Germany, more than in Italy.

As demonstrated by Jaffrelot (op cot, pp
53-54), Golwarkar drew his idea of nation and nationalism from the works
of a German lawyer, Johann Kaspar Bluntschli.

Golwarkar’s position regarding Muslims was even more extreme than Savarkar’s:

in one word, they [Muslims] must cease to be foreigners¹⁹ 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 (op cit, p 52). Apart from the
militants of the main Hindu organisations, there is reason to think that
the Indian – and particularly Marathi – public opinion also was exposed
to the views of some newspapers which echoed Savarkar’s declarations²⁰ or published articles in favour of the dictators. In 1939 The Mahratta published a series of articles in favour of the international policy of Italy and Germany,²¹ while Kesari
of December 8 and 15, 1939 published an article bearing the title
‘Failure of Democracy and Rise of Fascism’. There the same
interpretation already expressed during the 1920s was repeated,
according to which fascism arose from the crisis of democracy. Fascism
of obviously considered superior to democracy.

While this literature still focused on
both the dictators and their policies, already from the Spring of 1939
the Savarkarled Hindu Mahasabha seemed to have finally chosen Germany as
its main reference point at the international level. On March 25, 1939
the Hindu party made the following statement:

Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of
the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of
Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of
Indo-Germanic civilisation are welcomed by the religious and sensible
Hindus of India with a jubilant hope. Only a few socialists headed by
Pandit J Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present
government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any
significance in India. The vain imprecations of Mahatma Gandhi against
Germany’s indispensable vigour in matters of internal policy obtain but
little regard insofar as they are uttered by a man who has always
betrayed and confused the country with an affected mysticism. I think
that Germany’s crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring
all the Aryan nations of the world to their senses and awaken the Indian
Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory (The declaration
contained in Auswartiges Amt-Politischen Archiv (AA-PA, Bonn)/Pol VII,
statement by the spokesman of the Hindu Mahasabha, March 25, 1939, is
quoted by M Hauner, op cit, p 66).

The aggressive racial policy carried out
by Germany must have played a fundamental role in this shift of interest
from Italy to Germany.

At the practical level, this shift was
represented by the attempt made by Savarkar to get in touch with other
Hindu nationalist forces working abroad. Throughout 1938 Savarkar had a
considerable exchange of letters with one of the historical leaders of
the revolutionary movement abroad: Rash Behari Bose. (On Rash Behari
Bose see Uma Mukherjee, Two Great Indian Revolutionaries, Firma
KLM, Calcutta, 1966). Rash Behari, who had lived in Japan since 1915
and had obtained Japanese nationality in 1923, was in touch with the
Japanese extreme right, in particular with the ‘Association of the Black
Dragon’ (ASMAE, AP,

Giappone (Japan), b 6, 1934, b Movimento
Panasiatico (Pan-Asiatic Movement), express telegram n 166/113, from
Italian Embassy, Tokyo, February 24 , 1934 , to the Ministry of External
Affairs, signed Auriti).

According to our sources, Savarkar and

Rash Behari were in touch at least from
March 1938. A couple of letters from Rash Behari to the president of the
Hindu Mahasabha were published by The

Mahratta, for propaganda purposes.²²
The expected effect of the publication of the two letters was that All
Hindu Sanghatanists in India find themselves strengthened in their views
and activities to see you advocating the cause of Hindu Sanghatan and
taking up such a far seeing and insighted a view of the Indian situation
political and social ( NMML, ibid, August 18).

In the summer of 1938 Rash Behari
informed Savarkar of his intention to open a branch of the Hindu
Mahasabha in Japan. Even if the number of the militants was small, it
could nevertheless become an authorised international mouth piece of the
Hindu Mahasabha and Hindudom as such in Eastern foreign countries (
NMML, ibid ).

Savarkar’s reply was favourable: the
president of the Hindu Mahasabha invited Rash Behari to realise his
objective as soon as possible, and advised him that the Japanese branch
of the party should depend upon the main office in India (NMML, ibid,
letter from Savarkar to Rash Behari Bose, November 14, 1938, signed
President Hindu Maha Sabha).

In winter the closeness between the two
leaders was such that Savarkar asked Rash Behari to send a message to
the Hindu Mahasabha session of December 28 ( NMML, ibid ).

The contacts that Savarkar tried to
establish with the consulates of the axis powers in Bombay did not bring
any noticeable result. Most probably this happened because the outbreak
of the war made collaboration with foreign powers much more difficult.

The only result of these contacts – which
could materialise only through the German consulate – was, most
probably, the circulation of the already mentioned speech of Savarkar in
the German newspapers,²³ in exchange for articles in favour of Germany’s Jewish policy in the Marathi newspapers.²⁴ The
person in charge of contacting the axis representatives was
Jugalikishor Birla (NMML, ibid, letter from Savarkar to Birla, November
2, 1938, signed by hand VDS), while the two Germans in charge of dealing
with the Hindu Mahasabha were G L Lesczczynski, representative of the
German News Agency, and P Pazze, officially manager of a company located
in Bombay. These two agents had been responsible for the publication of
Savarkar’s speech in the Volkischer Beobachter (NMML, ibid,
letter from the secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha to Pazze, November 19,
1938, and, with the same date, letter from Leszczynski to Malekar). The
most evident sign of these contacts was the despatch of a copy of Mein Kampf from Leszczynski to Savarkar.

V

Waiting for the Right Enemy

The literature promoted by militant Hinduism is trying nowadays to compare the attitude adopted by the Hindu

Mahasabha towards the totalitarian
regimes with Subhas Chandra Bose’s position towards the axis powers.
According to this literature, the evidence in favour of such
interpretation is a meeting which took place between Bose and Savarkar
in Bombay in June 1940.²⁵ On this occasion Savarkar is
supposed to have suggested to Subhas that he should go to Europe and
seek the dictators’ support. Whereas the authors connected to the
above-mentioned school of thought consider this claim a matter of fact, I
could not find any record of the talks between the two leaders.
According to a short article in the Times of India of June 24,

Mr Bose had also talks with Mr V D

Savarkar, president of the All India
Hindu Mahasabha, at the latter’s residence at Dadar on Saturday evening.
It is understood that the discussions related to the present political
situation in the country and the steps the Hindu Mahasabha and the
‘Forward Bloc’ should take in co-operation with other parties. The
results of the talks, it is stated, were not encouraging.

The episode, as always, did not go unnoticed by the police, who gave a brief account of it:

Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Bombay on
June 22nd and had discussions with M A Jinnah and V D Savarkar with a
view of exploring the possibilities of co-operation between the Forward
Bloc and the Hindu Mahasabha respectively. Bose’s efforts were
apparently productive of no result. The Bombay Forward Bloc endeavoured
to arrange a meeting on June 23rd at which Subhas Chandra Bose would
speak, but it was necessary to abandon the meeting on account of lack of
support (MSA, Home Special Department, 1023 , 1939-40, SA dated June
29, 1940, ‘Forward Bloc’).

The absence of accounts by the Hindu
Mahasabha on the meeting can be explained by the fact that, both the
leaders being involved in anti-British activities, it would not make
sense leaving records of sensitive matters. Not even among Bose’s papers
and writings is there any reference to the meeting. It is therefore
impossible to reconstruct the content of the talks between the two
leaders, unless we trust the only source available. This is the speech
made by Savarkar on the occasion of the dissolution of the Abhinav
Bharat in 1952. It is weak evidence, because it is not supported by any
written proof, and was given several years after the event. My
impression of the episode is that it is a sort of historiographic
invention, directed to legitimise the otherwise ambiguous position of
the Hindu Mahasabha during the war. Asserting that Netaji’s project had
Savarkar’s sanction means not only that Savarkar had a sort of patronage
on Bose’s activities in Europe, but, more important, that Savarkar
played an important role in the freedom fight.

Certainly the meeting did take place, and
very possibly the two leaders discussed Bose’s intention to go to
Europe and seek the support of the axis powers. However, all this is far
from meaning that Savarkar inspired Bose, who, right from 1933, had his
own connections with the dictators’ governments. The president of the
Hindu Mahasabha put forward his claim on the content of his meeting with
Netaji four years after Gandhi’s assassination, when the image of the
Hindu Mahasabha and its affiliations were badly damaged by the suspicion
of their involvement in the murder. Accordingly it makes sense to think
that the organisations of militant Hinduism must have perceived the
necessity to rehabilitate their political past and re-invent a more
clear-cut antiBritish stand. What stronger argument, therefore, could be
available than the assertion that the Hindu Mahasabha was secretly
ready to support Bose’s plans?

The involvement in Gandhi’s assassination
was not the only reason of crisis: the image of Hindu nationalism was
indeed already damaged by the ambiguous attitude adopted in the war
period. The policy actually followed by Hindu nationalism during the
war, namely, responsive cooperation, was far from being unambiguous on
both transfer of powers and relations with the British. In fact, the
ambivalence of responsive co-operation was made explicit by Savarkar
himself in a 1942 presidential speech. On that occasion Savarkar stated
that: “the policy of responsive co-operation…covers the whole gamut of
patriotic activities from unconditional co-operation to active and even
armed resistance… (L G Khare (ed), Hindu Rashtra Darshan,
Bombay, 1949, p 266). It comes as no surprise that this ambiguous stand
raised almost universal suspicion towards the forces of militant
Hinduism and invited the charge of collaborationism. ²⁶ Immediately
after the outbreak of the war, the Hindu Mahasabha decided that its
working committee of September 10 , 1939 should adopt the following line
of conduct:

no reference should be made to the
justice or otherwise of the claim of residents of Danzig to return to
the Reich; for, in principle we shall have to support the action of the
Germans of Danzig; not that we should denounce this but then under no
circumstances can we take part in this war on the side of British (NMML,
Savarkar papers, microfilm, rn 12, cit, letter from Mandlekar to
Savarkar, September 7, 1939).

The working committee of September 10
decided which steps should be taken in order to prepare the nation to
face the emergency provoked by the outbreak of the war:

As the task of defending India from any
military attack is of common concern to the British government as well
as ourselves and as we are unfortunately not in a position today to
carry out that responsibility unaided, there is ample room for
wholehearted co-operation between India and England (NMML, Moonje
papers, subject files, n 51).

The preliminary condition for such
cooperation was the devolution of full powers to a central Indian
government by the British. Later on, the Hindu Mahasabha would be less
strict than the Congress on this issue.

The committee wished for the realisation
of the militarisation of Indian society and the Indianisation of the
army. It requested a reform of the Arms Act, along the lines prevailing
in the UK. It demanded also that territorial forces and paramilitary
groups be strengthened, that new military organisations be created in
those provinces where they did not exist before, and, finally, that more
Indian students be accepted in the military academies. The Hindu
Mahasabha requested the government to increase the local production of
modern armaments so that India could equip its army, without depending
on imports from other nations.

Soon after this resolution, the Hindu
Mahasabha started to work for the creation of a national militia.
Naturally enough, Moonje became the person in charge. Inviting party
members to attend a preliminary meeting for the foundation of the
militia, in Pune on October 8, Moonje described the future organisation
in the following terms:

I have the pleasure in bringing to your
notice a resolution of the Hindu Mahasabha for the organisation of the
Hindu Militia in the country for the purpose of taking part in the
defence of India both from external and internal aggression, whenever an
occasion of emergency may arise during the course of the AngloGerman
War.

… I believe that it will be quite in the
fitness of things, in view of the historic All-India Military leadership
of the Maharashtra, that a beginning should be made in the Maharashtra;
so that the lead may be taken up by the whole of India afterwards
(NMML, ibid, circular letter dated September 27). Who could be the
internal aggressors if not the Muslims?

The answer seems to be contained in a letter from Moonje to Khaparde of October 18:

… the Moslems are making themselves a
nuisance. The Congress government will not stand up but will yield to
them. We cannot expect any consideration at the hands of the Congress
government. We shall have to fight both the government and the Moslems
just as the Khaksars are doing in the UP. The Hindu Mahasabha will give
its support to such fights as the Muslim League is supporting the
Khaksars: you must prepare the volunteers in your towns. The Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh may be useful and handy (NMML, ibid).

Moonje expressed in more explicit terms his hostility to the Congress:

But there is one worry which is
menacingly uppermost in its mind at the present moment and that is –
what will happen if, in the mutually antagonistic and clashing
ideologies, the Charka were to come into conflict with the Rifle …?
(NMML ibid, circular letter).

Charka as a Gandhian symbol was a metaphor for the Congress.

The theme of the ‘internal enemy’ is a
further element of affinity between the ideology of fascism and of Hindu
nationalism, expressed by a similar rhetoric. It seems nevertheless
that the Sanghatanists were inclined to fight the Muslims and the
Congress, rather than the British.

According to Moonje’s plans, the RSS
should be involved in the creation of the national militia. Indeed, in a
letter of October 18 to General Nanasahib Shinde of Baroda, Moonje
affirmed I am glad to note that you have approved of my idea of a Hindu
National Militia for Maharashtra as is being organised by the Hindu
Mahasabha.

I have been myself thinking of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and I am corresponding with their leader.
They may have their peculier (sic) difficulties and the point is that the militia should be organised under these circumstances whether the Rashtriya Swayamsevak

Sangh can undertake the task or not ( NMML, ibid, reply to a letter from Shinde to Moonje, dated October 16, 1939).

During this preliminary phase, Moonje
consulted Hedgewar, with whom he exchanged several letters and whom
Moonje hoped to meet, in order to discuss the participation of the RSS
in the militia (NMML, ibid, letter from B S Moonje to Hedgewar, October
18, 1939).

On October 27 a militant from Lahore
informed Moonje that We have at present in Punjab several Dals and
Sanghs, the total number of members of which is approximately about
50,000; but they are not working under a single organisation. There are
Rashtriya Sevak Sangh, Atma Sangh, Mahabir Dal, Seva Sangh and Akali Dal
working under different leaders. They have a sort of military
organisation. The Akali Dal is armed with swords: but the others have
other weapons. The Rashtriya Sevak Sangh has only lathies. The first
thing to do is to bring all these sanghs on a uniform basis working
under a single leadership though not of one man but of a council (NMML,
ibid). In spite of such mobilisation, the Hindu militia had not been
formed. The government did not withdraw the existing restrictions
imposed on military and paramilitary organisations and schools.

It is difficult to establish if the
organisations of militant Hinduism were arming themselves against
possible foreign invaders, the internal enemy, or the British. Most
probably they were carefully hedging their bet, ready to take advantage
of any future development. However, it is a fact that at a meeting with
Linlithgow in Bombay on October 9, 1939, Savarkar adopted a decidedly
conciliatory position vis-a-vis the British. According to Linlithgow

the situation, he [Savarkar] said, was
that His Majesty’s Government must now turn to the Hindus and work with
their support. After all, though we and the Hindus have had a good deal
of difficulty with one another in the past, that was equally true of the
relations between Great Britain and the French and, as recent events
had shown, of relations between Russia and Germany. Our interests were
now the same and we must therefore work together. Even though now the
most moderate of men, he had himself been in the past an adherent of a
revolutionary party, as possibly, I might be aware. (I confirmed that I
was). But now that our interests were so closely bound together the
essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends; and
the old antagonism was no longer necessary. The Hindu Mahasabha, he went
on to say, favoured an unambiguous undertaking of Dominion Status at
the end of the war. It was true, at the same time, that they challenged
the Congress claim to represent anything but themselves ( India Office
(IO), Mss Eur F 125/8 1939, Letters to the Secretary of State for India:
the letter is dated October 7, but the report of the meeting is in the
postscript on October 9).

In 1940 the Hindu Mahasabha declared its
intention to take part in the viceroy’s executive council and the war
office. We should not forget that neither the Hindu Mahasabha nor the
RSS took part in the Quit India movement. The position they maintained
in that period is clearly depicted by Savarkar’s declaration of February
17, 1942, when he asserted that, if Japan, after having approached the
Indian borders and invaded the country, had been ready to declare the
independence of India, it would have incredibly “boosted” Indians’
imagination. The British should therefore give the impression that
fighting beside them meant fighting for freedom.²⁷ It seems,
in other words, that the Hindu Mahasabha (and probably its affiliations)
was more interested in succeeding the British, if possible with their
complicity, rather than fighting them.

The other side of this ambiguous stand
was a blatant admiration for the European dictators. According to a
police report of May 1942, regarding the activities of Poona

Officers Training Camp of April-May,

Dr P C Sahasrabudhe addressed the
volunteers on three occasions. On 4.5.42 he announced that the Sangh
followed the principle of dictatorship. Denouncing democratic government
as an unsatisfactory form of government, he quoted France as a typical
example and, praising dictatorship, he pointed to Japan, Russia and
Germany. He particularly praised the Fuehrer principle of Germany. On
21.5.42 he drew attention to the value of propaganda, quoting Russia and
Germany as examples, and again extolled the virtues of the leader
principle, citing Mussolini’s success as a further example (NAI, Home
Poll Dept 28/8/1942, ‘Summary of a report on the officers’ Training Camp
of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh held in April/May 1942 at Poona’,
copy in MSA, Home Special Dept, 822 IInd 1940-41).

When, in the 1940s, the totalitarian
regimes had already revealed their true colours, the attitude of the
organisations of militant Hinduism towards fascism and nazism was still
benevolent. In spite of the already, even if only partially, known
atrocities committed by Hitler and Mussolini, the main organisations of
Hindu nationalism still praised the dictators and their regimes. This
position could be justified, had it been part of a coherent and strong
anti-British policy. However, as I have tried to demonstrate, the forces
of Hindu nationalism seem to have concentrated their efforts more
against the socalled internal enemies – Muslims and Congress – rather
than the foreign invaders. While Bose’s alliance with the axis powers
had mainly an anti-British function, the Hindu Mahasabha used its
support to the dictators as an instrument to blackmail the British.

VI Conclusions

The preceding discussion has shown that:
(a) the main historical organisations and leaders of Hindu nationalism
had a distinctive and sustained interest in fascism and nazism; (b)
fascist ideological influences on Hindu nationalism were present and
relevant; and (c) to a certain extent, these influences were channelled
through direct contacts between Hindu nationalists and members of the
Italian fascist state. No doubt, beginning with the early 1920s, and up
to the second world war, Hindu nationalists looked at the political
reality of fascist Italy, and subsequently of nazi Germany, as a source
of inspiration.

One of the results of the contacts
between fascism and Hindu nationalism was the attempt to militarise
Hindu society and to create a militant mentality among the Hindus. If it
is true that the Hindu society elaborated its own patterns of
militarisation – I refer to the shakas as a typically Indian phenomenon –
it is equally true that a most relevant result of fascist influence was
the transmission of a more functional organisation and a stronger
political character to the already existing organisations of political
Hinduism.

At the ideological level, the most
meaningful effect of the fascist influence is represented by the way in
which Hindu nationalism developed its own concept of diversity,
transforming ‘diverse’ people into enemies. Of course, the concept of
internal enemy is already implicit contained in Savarkar’s Hindutva.
Nevertheless, the continuous reference to German racial policy and the
comparison of the Jewish problem in Germany with the Muslim question in
India reveals the evolution of the concept of ‘internal enemy’ along
explicitly fascist lines.

In my opinion, if one wants to understand
the evolution of Hindu radicalism in the post-independence period, one
has to take into account both the domestic roots of this phenomenon and
the external influence on its development.

In the 1920s and 1930s fascism was an
international phenomenon. As such it was bound to influence the ideology
and practice of similar movements all over the world. Since many of Bal
Thackeray’s most outraceously anti-Muslim and racist statements are
literal quotations of Savarkar’s speeches and theories, it is legitimate
to conclude that such influence is still alive in today’s militant
Hinduism. EPW

Notes

[My stay in India for collecting material
for the present paper was made a lot easier and more profitable by
Partha Sarathi Gupta. T R Sareen, A R Kulkarni and Bhanu Kapil. While
writing this paper in Italy I was able to count on Michelguglielmo
Torri’s criticisms and suggestions, which forced me to considerably
rework my first draft. I wish to warmly thank all of them for their help
and friendship. Of course, the usual disclaim stands that I am the only
one responsible for the contents of and any error left in this
article.]

• In the following pages I will treat the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS
  as two different organisations, belonging to the same political milieau.
  This, in spite of the attempt made by the BJP or RSS oriented
  intellectuals and scholars to deny, or at least to minimise any
  reciprocal affinity between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha. Speaking
  about a topic which has nothing to do with the relations between the RSS
  and the Hindu Mahasabha, I will indirectly show that the two
  organisations shared a specific ideological background.
• Regarding this aspect, Jaffrelot asserts that “As distinct from
  Nazism, the RSS’s ideology treats society as an organism with a secular
  spirit, which is implanted not so much in the race as in a
  socio-cultural system … Finally, in contrast to both Italian fascism and
  Nazism the RSS does not rely on the central figure of the leader” (op
  cit, pp 63-64).
• The details mentioned in the text are in Kesari, May 13,
  1924, June 24, November 10 and 24, 1925. I will just summarise the
  content of the articles, having had this material translated from
  Marathi by a young Indian colleague of mine.
• The article quotes a speech of Mussolini, without specifying its date.
• Regarding this aspect, see Paolo Beonio Brocchieri and Giorgio Borsa (eds), Garibaldi, Mazzini e il Risorgimento nel risveglio dell’Asia e dell’Africa (Garibaldi, Mazzini and the Italian Risorgimento in the awakening of Asia and Africa), Franco Angeli, Milan, 1984.
• Unfortunately there is no Italian report of the meeting, not even
  among the prime minister’s papers. But there are the routine papers,
  recording Moonje’s request for an audience, dated March 16, 1931 and the
  response of the cabinet of the minister of the external affairs, dated
  March 18: Archivio Storico Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Historical
  Archives Ministry of External Affairs ASMAE), Rome, Udienze (Audiences),
  1930-33, bundle 27 , letter from the British Embassy in Rome, to the
  Ministry of External Affairs, March 16, 1931 and reply from the cabinet
  of the minister, n 1102, March 18, 1931. The British authorities in Rome
  managed Moonje’s audience.
• It was indeed Moonje who brought up the young Hedgewar in his own
  house and, later sent him to Calcutta, officially to study at the
  National Medical College, but with the secret aim to get in touch with
  the revolutionary organisations in Bengal (B V Deshpande and S R
  Ramaswamy, Dr Hedgewar the EpochMaker, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1981 , pp 14-32).
• The Mahratta, April 12, 1931, ‘Dr B S Moonje on Round Table Conference’. Special

Interview for The Mahratta,
paragraph entitled ‘National Militia’. A report of Moonje’s tour of
Europe is in M N Ghatate, ‘Dr B S Moonje – Tour of European Countries’
in N G Dixit (ed), Dharmaveer Dr B S Moonje. Commemoration Volume. Birth Centenary Celebration 1872-1972, Nagpur, 1972, p 68.

• Moonje was interested in the problem of military education already
  by the end of 1920s. He was in favour of Indianisation of the army. In
  1927 he worked at the foundation of the Aeroclub of India, while in 1929
  he was a member of the commission for the selection of candidates to
  Sandhurst Military Academy. In the same year he founded the Rifle
  Association in Nagpur (see correspondence in NMML, Moonje papers,
  microfilm, Letters, rn 7, 1926-28).
• References to the above-mentioned activities of the Italian
  consulates in Bombay are in Giovanni Gentile Foundation, Rome,
  Correspondence from third parties to Gentile, f Carelli Mario, undated
  letter, certainly written on June 29, 1938 and letter dated October 11,
  1938.
• The articles are in the issues of July 6, August 10 and July 27,
  1939 respectively: Central State Archives (ACS), Minculpop (Ministry of
  Popular Culture), b 17 bis, f 26, Gran Bretagna, subfile 14, R Consolato
  Bombay ( Royal Consulate Bombay), report n 1904/St 3, August 4, 1939,
  from Italian Consulate, Bombay, to the Ministry of Popular Culture.

A copy of Carelli’s article is in MSA, Home Special Dept, 830 (I) 1939.

• “Di idee fasciste, ha fondato un’organizzazione da lui chiamata
  ‘Iron Guards’ prendendo a modello le nostre, ma adattandole alle
  peculiari condizioni dell’India. Egli e i suoi amici vestivano la
  camicia nera: le prime camicie nere dell’India. Lo sviluppo di questa
  organizzazionee stato compromesso dallo scoppio della guerra”: ACS,
  Minculpop, 17 bis, cit, report n 2298/St 3, from Italian Consulate,
  Bombay, October 4, 1939, to the Ministry of Popular Culture.
• It seems, moreover, that Hedgewar was deeply influenced by the ideas expressed in Savarkar’s Hindutva.
  When Hedgewar decided to found his organisation, he went to Ratnagiri
  to meet Savarkar, in order to obtain from him suggestions and advice.
  Subsequently, during Sarvarkar’s internment in Ratnagiri, Hedgewar had
  continuously been in touch with Babarao Savarkar. See, respectively,
  DeshpandeRamaswamy, op cit, p 65 and 74; Walter K Andersen, Shridhar D
  Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi, 1987, p 33; Dhananjay Keer, Veer Savarkar and His Time,
  Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1988, pp 17071. Among Hedgewar papers, in
  Nagpur, I found several letters exchanged between Hedgewar and Babarao
  Savarkar, who was closely connected to the RSS.
• On several occasions, after having been released, Savarkar
  congratulated “the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh of Dr Hedgewar of Nagpur
  on its work and discipline”. At the ‘guru purnima’ celebrated by the
  RSS on July 29, 1939, Savarkar gave a speech to approximately 5,000
  people, while several years later, during the RSS officers’ training
  camp (OTC) which took place in Pune during May 27 to 29, 1943, in the
  presence of Golwarkar, Babarao Savarkar, B S Moonje and about 5,000
  people, the former president of the Hindu Mahasabha expressed his
  pleasure to see the display by swayamsevaks in great number and said
  that he was “proud to see the branches of the Sangh spread throughout
  India during his visits to various places…He was pleased to see the
  Hindu youths, boys and girls, joining the institutions, based on
  Hinduism, in great number”. Militants had also the habit of collecting
  donations for their leader. In August 1937 in Pune, the local Hindu
  militants and sympathisers offered him Rs 250. Several years later, on
  the occasion of Savarkar’s 61st birthday, considerable donations were
  collected by the exponents of the Hindu organisations Savarkar visited
  during one of his propaganda tours. At the above-mentioned OTC camp,
  where Savarkar celebrated his birthday, Rs 1,80,000 had been collected
  by Hindu organisations, Pune municipality, and private citizens.
  Respectively in MSA, Home Special Dept, 60 D (g) Pt II, 1937, Extract
  from the Bombay Secret Abstract for week ending January 15, 1938,
  entitled ‘Hindu Affairs’ and ‘Summary report of the meeting held in the
  Tilak Smarak Mandir on behalf of Poona students’, August 3, 1937;
  Maharashtra State Archives (MSA), Home Special Dept, 60 D (g) Pt III,
  1938, ‘Extract from the Bombay Province weekly letter No 31, dated
  August 5, 1939’; MSA, Home Special Department, 1009 III 1942, police
  report entitled ‘A summary report of the concluding ceremony of the
  Officers’ Training Camp of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, at Poona on
  the May 27, 1943’ and note from the Home Department Special, dated June
  10, 1943.
• NMML, Savarkar papers, microfilm, rn 23, part 2, Miscellaneous
  Correspondence January 1938-May 1939, ‘Press Note issued by the Hindu
  Mahasabha Office Bombay Branch’, undated A summary of Savarkar’s speech
  is also in MSA, Bombay, Home Special

Department, 60 D (g) Pt III 1938,
‘Extract from the weekly confidential report of the District Magistrate,
Poona, dated the August 11, 1938’.

The Italian consul in Calcutta sent to
the ministry of external affairs in Rome an accurate abstract of an
article about Savarkar’s speech, reported in Ananda Bazar Patrika
of August 3. The abstract is entitled ‘Critiche al viaggio di Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru in Europa’ (Critiques of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s trip
to Europe), in ASMAE Affari Politici (Political Affairs AP), India, b
7, 1938, resoconto della stampa indiana (summary of the Indian press),
enclosure to express telegram n 3489/46, from Italian Consulate,
Calcutta, August 12, 1938, to the ministry of external affairs.

• Immediately after the great anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9, 1938,
  known as ‘Crystal night’, the Congress expressed its condemnation of the
  German policy with the declaration of December 12, and subsequently
  supported the concession of asylum in India to the Jews. Regarding this
  matter, see Milan Hauner, India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan and Indian Nationalists in the Second World War, Klett-Cotta Stuttgart, 1981, p 67.
• A summary of the presidential speech is in Bombay Chronicle of December 29, 1939.
• Hindutva had been written clandestinely during Savarkar’s
  detention at the Andamans, sent to India secretly in 1917 and published
  underground in 1923.
• Savarkar, as well as most of the militants belonging to his milieu,
  considered the Indian Muslims either as successors of the Mughal
  invaders, or as original Hindus who were forcibly converted to Islam. In
  any case, according to the main ideologues of political Hinduism the
  pole of attraction of Indian Muslims was outside India and Hindu system
  of values. Not only was Islam a ‘foreign’ religion, which had its main
  institutions outside India, but the Indian Muslims were, according to
  Savarkar and his companions, more interested in creating a separate
  nation, instead of recognising India as their homeland. Apart from the
  fact that this must have not been the attitude of most of Indian
  Muslims, militant Hindus had exaggerated claims towards the Muslims. For
  militant Hindus it was not sufficient that Indian Muslims considered
  themselves first Indians and secondly Muslims, as most of them probably
  did. According to the Hindu fundamentalists, indeed, Muslims should
  conform themselves to the Hindu system of values, which was, of course,
  unacceptable.
• An article entitled ‘The Savarkar Method of rejuvenation of the Hindudom: New Drive in Hindu Thought and Action’, published in The Mahratta of January 6, 1939 repeated the opinions already expressed by Savarkar in the speech of December 11, 1938.
• April 28, 1939, ‘Why Italy Invaded Albania?’, May 26, ‘How Germany’s
  National Socialism Arose?’ and ‘Inciting Mussolini against Hitler’, May
  19 and June 2, ‘Germany-Rome Axis Strengthened’ and ‘German-Italian
  Pact Concluded: Reaction to Encirclement Policy’. At p 51 of his book,
  Jaffrelot quotes some articles in favour of Franco, Mussolini and Hitler
  published by the Hindu Outlook of November 2 and 30, 1938 and The Mahratta, of November 6, 1939.
• To the two letters, dated March 7 and August 11 , 1938 respectively,
  there is a reference in NMML, Savarkar papers, microfilm, r n 23,
  letter dated May 23, 1938 from the secretary, Hindu Mahasabha, Bombay
  Office to Rash Behari Bose; unsigned letter dated August 11 to the
  editor of The Mahratta, Gajantrao Ketkar; August 18 from J D Malekar, secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha to Rash Behari Bose.
• Copy of the press note containing the text of the speech had been
  sent also to Rash Behari, so that he would not only publish, but also
  show it to the Japanese government: NMML, Savarkar papers, rn 23, cit,
  letter from the secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha to Rash Behari Bose,
  November 4, 1938.
• NMML, ibid, letter from Malekar to Leszczynski, December 7, 1938 and
  reply, December 9, 1938. At the ministry of external affairs, in Rome,
  among the papers from the cabinet of the ministry, I could find a copy
  of Savarkar’s The Indian War of Independence of 1857: it is not
  possible to establish if the book arrived in Italy during this period,
  before, or later. We are, however, allowed to suppose that Savarkar was
  not totally unknown to the Italian authorities: ASMAE, Gab 409, b3.
• In favour of this thesis are: (1) Vikram Savarkar, Vinayak’s
  grandson, whom I met in Bombay in March 1997; (2) Vishvas Savarkar,
  author of a script entitled ‘Veer Savarkar INA’s Source of Inspiration’,
  in Savarkar, commemoration volume published by Savarkar Darshan
  Pratisthan, Bombay, 1989, pp 147-51. In the same volume: (3) Shivramu
  (pseud), ‘Savarkar’s Role in The British Quitting India’, pp 183-88 ;
  (4) D Keer, op cit, p 257; (5) N B Khare, Political Memoirs, Nagpur, 1959, p 52 ; (6) U Mukherjee, op cit, pp 159-60 ; (7) S V Bhalerao, Savarkar: His SocioPolitical Thought and Leadership, a PhD thesis submitted to the Nagpur University, faculty of social sciences, p 234-35.
• Regarding the collaborationist attitude of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS, see D R Goyal, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh,
  Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979, p 86. 27 NMML, Savarkar
  papers, microfilm, rn 24. Unfortunately, the photocopies of this
  document have never been mailed to me by the staff. I could only
  summarise from my notes, instead of quoting the original text.

Source: http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/casolari.pdf

Hindutva’s fascist heritage

In the
1930s Hindu nationalism borrowed from European fascism to transform
‘different’ people into ‘enemies’. Leaders of militant Hinduism
repeatedly expressed their admiration for authoritarian leaders such as
Mussolini and Hitler and for the fascist model of society. 

The
existence of direct  contacts between the  representatives of the 
(Italian) fascist regime, including Mussolini, and Hindu nationalists
demonstrates that Hindu nationalism had much more than an abstract
interest in the ideology and practice of fascism. The interest of Indian
Hindu nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as
dictated by an occasional curiosity, confined to a few individuals;
rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the
attention that Hindu nationalists, especially in Maharashtra, focussed
on Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared to be
an example of conservative revolution. This concept was discussed at
length by the Marathi press right from the early phase of the Italian
regime.

From 1924 to
1935 Kesari regularly published editorials and articles about Italy,
fascism and Mussolini. What impressed the Marathi journalists was the
socialist origin of fascism and the fact that the new regime seemed to
have transformed Italy from a backward country to a first class power.
Indians could not know, then, that, behind the demagogic rhetoric of the
regime, there was very little substance.

Moreover,
the Indian observers were convinced that fascism had restored order in a
country previously upset by political tensions. In a series of
editorials, Kesari described the passage from liberal government to
dictatorship as a shift from anarchy to an orderly situation, where
social struggles had no more reason to exist. 

The Marathi
newspaper gave considerable space to the political reforms carried out
by Mussolini, in particular the substitution of the election of the
members of Parliament with their nomination and the replacement of
parliament itself with the Great Council of Fascism. Mussolini’s idea
was the opposite of that of democracy and it was expressed by the
dictator’s principle, according to which ‘one man’s government is more
useful and more binding’ for the nation than the democratic
institutions. 

Is all this not reminiscent of the principle of ‘obedience to one leader’ (‘ek chalak anuvartitva’) followed by the RSS?

Finally, a
long article of August 13, 1929, ‘Italy and the Young Generations’,
stated that the Italian young generations had succeeded the old one to
lead the country. That had resulted in the ‘fast ascent of Italy in
every field’. The article went on to describe at length the organisation
of the Italian society according to fascist models. The principal
reasons of the discipline of the Italian youths were strong religious
feelings, widespread among the population, attachment to the family, and
the respect of traditional values: no divorce, no singles, no right to
vote for women, whose only duty was to sit at home, by the fireplace.
The article focussed then on the fascist youth organisations, the
Balilla and the Avanguardisti.

One can
easily come to the conclusion that, by the late 1920s, the fascist
regime and Mussolini had considerable popularity in Maharashtra. The
aspect of fascism which appealed most to Hindu nationalists were, of
course, both the militarisations of society and what was seen as real
transformation of society, exemplified by the shift from chaos to order.
The anti–democratic system was considered as a positive alternative to
democracy which was seen as a typically British value.

The first
Hindu nationalist who came in contact with the fascist regime and its
dictator was BS 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 nation–wide organisation is well known. 

Between
February and March 1931, on his return from the Round Table Conference,
Moonje made a tour to 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. 

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 that 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 youth had to attend weekly meetings, where they practised
physical exercise, 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 organisations 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 Indias 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 Swayamsevak 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 Maharashtra and other provinces”.

Definitely
more meaningful is the report of the meeting with Mussolini. On the same
day, March 19, 1931 at 3 pm, in Palazzo Venzia, the headquarters of the
fascist government, he met the Italian dictator. The meeting is
recorded in the diary on March 20… 

“I shook
hands with him saying that I am Dr Moonje. He knew everything about me
and appeared to be closely, following the events of the Indian struggle
for freedom… 

“Signor Mussolini asked me if I have
visited the University. I said I am interested in the military training
of boys and have been visiting the Military Schools of England, France
and Germany. I have now come to Italy for the same purpose and I am very
grateful to say that the Foreign Office and the War Office have made
good arrangements for my visiting these schools. I just saw this morning
and afternoon the Balilla and the Fascist Organisations and I was much
impressed. Italy needs them for her development and prosperity. I do not
see anything objectionable though I have been frequently reading in the
newspapers not very friendly criticisms about them and about your
Excellency also. 

“Signor Mussolini: What is your opinion about them?

“Dr Moonje: Your Excellency, I am much impressed. Every aspiring and growing Nation needs such organisations. 

“Signor
Mussolini – who appeared very pleased – said – Thanks but yours is an
uphill task. However I wish you every success in return.

“Saying this he got up and I also got up to take his leave”.

The description of the Italian journey
includes information regarding fascism, its history, the fascist
‘revolution’, etc, and continues for two more pages.

One can
wonder at the association between BS Moonje and the RSS, but if we think
that Moonje had been Hedgewar’s mentor, the association will be much
clearer. The intimate friendship between Moonje and Hedgewar and the
former’s declared intention to strengthen the RSS and to extend it as a
nation–wide organisation prove a strict connection between Moonje and
the RSS. Moreover, it makes sense to think that the entire circle of
militant Hinduism must have been influenced by Moonje’s Italian
experience.

Moonje’s Plans for Militarising Hindus:

Once Moonje was back in India, he kept the
promise made in his diary and started immediately to work for the
foundation of his military school and for the militant reorganisation of
Hindu society in Maharashtra. He really did not waste time, for, as
soon as he reached Pune, he gave an interview to The Mahratta. Regarding
the military reorganisation of the Hindu community, he stressed the
necessity to ‘Indianise’ the army and expressed the hope that
conscription would become compulsory and an Indian would be put
in–charge of the defence ministry. 

He finally
made a clear reference to the Italian and German examples: “In fact,
leaders should imitate the youth movements of Germany and the Balilla
and Fascist organisations of Italy. I think they are eminently suited
for introduction in India, adapting them to suit the special conditions.
I have been very much impressed by these movements and I have seen
their activities with my own eyes in all details”.

Soon fascism
became a subject of public debate and Hedgewar himself was among the
promoters of a campaign in favour of the militarism of society,
according to fascist patterns. On January 31, 1934, Hedgewar presided
over a conference about fascism and Mussolini, organised by Kavde
Shastri. Moonje made the concluding speech. 

A few months
later, on March 31, 1934 Moonje, Hedgewar and Laloo Gokhale had a
meeting, the subject of which was again the military organisation of the
Hindus, along Italian and German lines:

“Laloo —
Well you are the president of the Hindu Sabha and you are preaching
Sanghathan of Hindus. It is ever possible for Hindus to be organised?

“I said —
You have asked me a question of which exactly I was thinking of late. I
have thought out a scheme based on Hindu Dharm Shashtra which provides
for standardisation of Hinduism throughout India… But the point is that
this ideal cannot be brought to effect unless we have our own swaraj
with a Hindu as a dictator like Shivaji of old or Mussolini or Hitler of
the present day in Italy or Germany… But this does not mean that we
have to sit with folded hands until (sic) some such dictator arises in
India. We should formulate a scientific scheme and carry on propaganda
for it.

The intimate
connection between Moonje and the RSS and the fascist character of the
latter is confirmed by British sources. An intelligence report published
in 1933 and entitled, ‘Note on the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh’,
ascribed to Moonje the responsibility of the reorganisation of the Sangh
in the Marathi speaking districts and in the Central Provinces in 1927.
The report, describing the activity and the character of the RSS,
warned that, “It is perhaps no exaggeration to assert that the Sangh
hopes to be in future India what the 

‘Fascists’ are to Italy and the ‘Nazis’ to Germany”. 

Summing up,
it is clear that the Hindu nationalists were very much attracted by the
figure of a strong leader. Moreover, they were keen to give their
organisation a strongly centralised structure.

Moonje’s
trip to Italy, contrary to what happened in the case of Subhash Chandra
Bose and other nationalists, did not give place to any further
co–operation between Hindu nationalism and the fascist regime. However,
these contacts were important at the ideological and organisational
levels. In fact, Moonje kept his promise to improve military education
in India and, as soon as he came back from his European trip, he started
to contact all those who could support his idea of militarising Hindu
society. 

In 1934,
Moonje started to work for the foundation of his own institution, the
Bhonsla Military School. For this purpose, in the same year he began to
work at the foundation of the Central Hindu Military Education Society,
whose aim was to educate them in ‘Sanatan Dharma’, and to train them “in
the science and art of personal and national defence”. Moonje’s
programme was therefore entirely devoted to Hindu society, and not to
Indian society as a whole.

It is
possible that the other function of the society was that of facilitating
the diffusion of military education and supporting the foundation of
new schools. During the preliminary work for the foundation of both
school and society, Moonje publicly admitted that his idea of militarily
reorganising Hindu society was inspired by the “military training
schools of England, France, Germany and Italy”. 

Moonje’s
‘Preface to the Scheme of the Central Hindu Military Society and its
Military School’ says at the outset: “This training is meant for
qualifying and fitting our boys for the game of killing masses of men
with the ambition of winning victory with the best possible causalities
(sic) of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the
adversary”.

Moonje does not give any clear–cut
indication regarding this ‘adversary’, whether is was the external
enemy, the British, or the ‘historical’ internal enemy, the Muslims. The
document continues with a long dissertation on the relation between
violence and non–violence. In it are drawn many examples from Indian
history and Hindu holy books, all in favour of organised violence, in
the form of Militarism. On the contrary, non–violence is considered a
form of renunciation and cowardice.

Moonje’s
views corresponded almost perfectly with Mussolini’s opinions: “…The
same thought is repeated though in a more forceful and direct language
by Signor Mussolini, the maker of modern Italy, when he says: ‘Our
desire for peace and collaboration with Europe is based on millions of
steel bayonets’.”

And again
from Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism: “I absolutely disbelieve in
perpetual peace which is detrimental and negative to the fundamental
virtues of man, which only by struggle reveal themselves in the light of
the sun”.

“War alone
brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of
nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it”.

“Fascism
believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.
It thus repudiates the doctrine of pacifism, which is born of
renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of
sacrifice”.

As far as
Germany was concerned, Moonje quoted a booklet entitled
Wehrwisssenschaft (Military Science), written by Ewald Banse, a
professor at the Brunswick Technical High School: “The starting point of
the book is that war is inevitable and certain and that it is
imperative to know as much about it and to be as efficient as
possible…the mind of the nation, from childhood on, must be impregnated
and familiarised with the idea of war”, because, the Professor says:
‘The dying warrior dies more easily when he knows that his blood is
ebbing for his national god’.”

The spirit of the last sentence is surprisingly coincident with the essence of the Hindu nationalism.

When Moonje
had to indicate practical ways of militarising Hindu society, he
returned again to the example of Italy and its military and paramilitary
organisations, and reported what he had seen. He described in detail
the structure of the ‘She Wolf’s Children’, the Balilla and the
Avanguardisti. He asserted that these organisations could provide
paramilitary training to the male population from the age of 8 upto18,
when the youth became young fascists. Italy was therefore in a position
of having “command of 6,000,000 trained and disciplined men ready to
face any emergency”.

The result
was that, “The Balillas are taught to build up moral character and take
the first steps towards becoming soldiers”. As a consequence, “There
will thus be no longer any distinction between the citizen and the
soldier, between the civilian and the man in uniform”.

Of course, nowadays we know that, inspite
of this remarkable number of militarily trained citizens, Italy lost the
war. Moonje did not know that the level of the training was low, and
the fascist faith of the people skin–deep.

Fascist
ideas were widespread among Hindu nationalists, at least in Maharashtra.
The above mentioned script had been printed in the form of a pamphlet
and distributed not only among the people Moonje tried to involve in his
project, but most probably, to an even wider public, which
unfortunately, is at present difficult to measure.

Eve of Second World War:

After Moonje’s trip to Italy there was no
further direct contact between exponents of the main Hindu organisations
and the Italian government. However, by the end of the 1930s Italian
representatives in India established some connections with the extremist
fringes of Hindu nationalism. The Italian consulate in Bombay was very
active in seeking contacts with the local political milieu. The Italian
diplomatic mission in Bombay was part of a network linking consulates in
Bombay and Calcutta with the radical movements of Maha-rashtra and
Bengal. 

The
influence of fascist ideology and practice must have gone far beyond the
limits of the main organisations of Hindu militant nationalism and must
have tended to the wide and intricate net of secondary militant groups
and centres of physical education or paramilitary training. This is
shown by the example of the Swastik League, founded on March 10, 1929 by
M R Jayakar — who became president — and by other local personalities.
In organising the Swastik League, Jayakar, who had a prominent position
within the Hindu Mahasabha, drew some inspiration from the fascist
paramilitary organisations. 

Savarkar and Nazism:

At this point we have to dwell on the
crucial problem of Savarkar’s position vis–à–vis the European radical
right. With Savarkar’s coming on the political scene, from the late
1930s to the Second World War, there was an intensification of cries in
favour or in defence of Italian and German policy, even if the
preference for Germany increased progressively.

Savarkar was declared president of the
Hindu Mahasabha as soon as he was released in 1937, and he held that
office until 1942. His presidentship covered the most sensitive period
of both Indian and international history in this century. According to
the commonly accepted opinion — supported by the organisations of
militant Hinduism — the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha have never been
particularly close, and during Savarkar’s presidentship, they severed
their links. Reality, however, seems to be different. In fact, the
available documentation shows not only that such a split never happened,
but that the two organisations always had close connections.

We should not forget that Hedgewar had been
secretary to the Hindu Mahasabha from 1926 to 1931. The RSS seems to
have provided support to the Hindu Mahasabha, as shown by the fact that
groups of RSS militants used to gather at the public meetings organised
to celebrate Savarkar’s release.

Two of the main topics of the speeches
Savarkar gave at the gatherings organised in his honour and at any other
public function of his party were the international situation and
Hindu–Muslim relations.

Regarding the first aspect, Savarkar had a
rather cynical view of the relations India should entertain at the
international level. He returned to freedom and entered into politics at
the time of the formation of the Rome–Berlin Axis and Japan’s adhesion
to the pact. Such an outcome was favourably assessed by Hindu radical
nationalism, including the Hindu Mahasabha.

‘India’s foreign policy’ was the subject of
a speech Savarkar gave to about 20,000 people in Pune on August 1,
1938. The following are the most meaningful parts of the speech,
according to a press note issued by the Bombay office of the Hindu
Mahasabha.

“He observed India’s foreign policy must
not depend on “isms”. Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and
Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of
governments were imperative and beneficial to them under the conditions
that obtained there. Bolshevism might have suited Russia and Democracy
as it is obtained in Briton (sic) to the British people”.

Political systems correspond then to the
nature of the respective population. This theory was clearly inspired by
a deterministic conception of race, similar to the conception of race
then dominant in Europe.

Starting a controversy with Nehru, Savarkar
openly defended the authoritarian powers of the day, particularly Italy
and, even more so, Germany: “Who are we to dictate to Germany, Japan or
Russia or Italy to choose a particular form of policy of government
simply because we woo it out of academical attraction? Surely Hitler
knows better than Pandit Nehru does what suits Germany best. The very
fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so
powerful as never before at the touch of Nazi or Fascist magical wand is
enough to prove that those political “isms” were the most congenial
tonics their health demanded”.

Savarkar asserted in a speech in the
presence of some 4,000 people at Pune on October 11, 1938, (that) if a
plebiscite had taken place in India, Muslims would have chosen to unite
with Muslims and Hindus with Hindus. This was a consequence of the
principle according to which it was not enough living together for a few
countries to form a nation, as “the common desire to form a nation was
essential for the formation of a nation”.

During Savarkar’s presidentship the
anti–Muslim rhetoric became more and more radical, and distinctly
unpleasant. It was a rhetoric that made continuous reference to the way
Germany was managing the Jewish question. Indeed, in speech after
speech, Savarkar supported Hitler’s anti–Jewish policy, and on October
14, 1938, he suggested the following solution for the Muslim problem in
India: “A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the
Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out from
Germany”.

Then, towards the end of the year in Thane,
in front of RSS militants and local sympathisers, right at the time
when Congress expressed its resolution against Germany, Savarkar stated
that, “in Germany the movement of the Germans is the national movement
but that of the Jews is a communal one”. And again the next year, on
July 29, in Pune, he said: “Nationality did not depend so much on a
common geographical area as on unity of thought, religion, language and
culture. For this reason the Germans and the Jews could no be regarded
as a nation”.

Without this unity, not even Muslims and
Hindus could be regarded as belonging to the same nation. Indian Muslims
should rather resign themselves to be considered as a minority, the
recognition of whose rights should depend on the magnanimity of the
majority.

Finally, at the end of 1939, on the
occasion of the 21st session of the Hind Mahasabha, Savarkar made one of
the most explicit comparisons between the Muslim question in India and
the Jewish problem in Germany: “…the Indian Muslims are on the whole
more inclined to identify themselves and their interests with Muslims
outside India than Hindus who live next door, like Jews in Germany”.

One can find a certain continuity between
the ideas of nations and nationhood expressed in Savarkar’s Hindutva and
the content of these declarations. Indeed in his book, Savarkar,
referring to the Muslims, asserted that “their holyland is far off in
Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and godmen, ideas and heroes are
not children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook
smack of foreign origin (Hindutva: Who is Hindu?).

A feeling of admiration for the Jewish
policy of Germany seems to have been shared by the entire circle of
Hindu nationalism at the end of the 1930s. In We, or Our Nationhood
Defined, Golwalkar, who would  become general secretary of the RSS a
year later declared that:

“German national pride has now become the
topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture,
Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic
races — the Jews. National 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 mot (?), to be assimilated
into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and
profit by”.

This had its root in the idea that being a
Hindu was a matter of race and blood, not only a matter of culture. In
turn that was an idea which was strikingly similar to the racial myths
celebrated in Germany, more than in Italy.

Golwarkar’s position regarding Muslims was
even more extreme than Savarkar’s: “in one word, they (Muslims) 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”. 


Waiting for the Right Enemy 

The literature promoted by militant
Hinduism is trying nowadays to compare the attitude adopted by the Hindu
Mahasabha towards the totalitarian regimes with Subhash Chandra Bose’s
position towards the axis powers. According to this literature, the
evidence in favour of such interpretation is a meeting which took place
between Bose and Savarkar in Bombay in June 1940.

My impression of the episode is that it is a
sort of historiagraphic invention, directed to legitimise the otherwise
ambiguous position of the Hindu Mahasabha during the war. Asserting
that Netaji’s project had Savarkar’s sanction means not only that
Savarkar had a sort of patronage on Bose’s activities in Europe, but
more important, that Savarkar played an important role in the freedom
fight.

Certainly the meeting did take place, and
very possibly the two leaders discussed Bose’s intention to go to Europe
and seek support of the axis powers. However, all this is far from
meaning that Savarkar inspired Bose, who, right from 1933, had his own
connections with the dictators’ governments. The president of the Hindu
Mahasabha put forward his claim on the content of his meeting with
Netaji four years after Gandhi’s assassination, when the image of the
Hindu Mahasabha and its affiliation were badly damaged by the suspicion
of their involvement in the murder. Accordingly it makes sense to think
that the organisations of militant Hinduism must have perceived the
necessity to rehabilitate their political past and re–invent a more
clear–cut anti–British stand. What stronger argument, therefore, could
be available than the assertion that the Hindu Mahasabha was secretly
ready to support Bose’s plan?

The involvement in Gandhi’s assassination
was not the only reason of crisis; the image of Hindu nationalism was
indeed already damaged by the ambiguous attitude adopted in the war
period. The policy actually followed by Hindu nationalism during the
war, namely, responsive co–operation, was far from being unambiguous on
both transfer of powers and relations with the British.

The committee wished for the realisation of
the militarisation of Indian society and the Indianisation of the army.
It requested a reform of the Arms Act, along the lines prevailing in
the UK. It demanded also that territorial forces and paramilitary groups
be strengthened, that new military organisations be created in those
provinces where they did not exist before, and finally that more Indian
students be accepted in the military academies. The Hindu Mahasabha
requested the government to increase the local production of modern
armaments so that India could equip its army, without depending on
imports from other nations.

Soon after this resolution, the Hindu
Mahasabha started to work for the creation of a national militia.
Naturally enough, Moonje became the person in charge. Inviting party
members to attend a preliminary meeting for the foundation of the
militia, in Pune on October 8, Moonje described the future organisation
in the following terms:

“I have the pleasure in bringing to your
notice a resolution of the Hindu Mahasabha for the organisation of the
Hindu Militia in the country for the purpose of taking part in the
defence of India both from external and internal aggression whenever an
occasion of emergency may arise during the course of the Anglo-German
War.

“…I believe that it will be quite in the
fitness of things, in view of the historic All–India Military leadership
of the Maharashtra, that a beginning should be made in the Maharashtra;
so that the lead may be taken up by the whole of India afterwards”. 

Who could be the internal aggressors if not the Muslims?

The answer seems to be contained in a
letter from Moonje to Khaparde of October 18: “… the Moslems are making
themselves a nuisance. The Congress government will not stand up but
will yield to them. We cannot expect any consideration at the hands of
the Congress government. We shall have to fight both the government and
the Moslems just as the Khaskars are doing in UP. The Hindu Mahasabha
will give its support to such fights as the Muslim League is supporting
the Khaskars: you must prepare the volunteers in your towns. The
Rashtriya Swaymasevak Sangh may be useful and handy.

The theme of the ‘internal enemy’ is a
further element of affinity between the ideology of fascism and of Hind
nationalism, expressed by a similar rhetoric. It seems nevertheless that
the Sanghatanists were inclined to fight the Muslims and the Congress,
rather than the British.

According to Moonje’s plans, the RSS should
be involved in the creation of the national militia. Indeed, in a
letter of October 18 to General Nanasahib Shinde of Baroda, Moonje
affirmed: “I am glad to note that you have approved of my idea of a
Hindu National Militia for Maharashtra as is being organised by the
Hindu Mahasabha.

“I have been myself thinking of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and I am corresponding with their leader.
They may have their peculiar (sic) difficulties and the point is that
the militia should be organised under these circumstances whether the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh can undertake the task or not.

During this preliminary phase, Moonje
consulted Hedgewar, with whom he exchanged several letters and whom
Moonje hoped to meet, in order to discuss the participation of the RSS
in the militia.

On October 27 a militant from Lahore
informed Moonje that: “We have at present in Punjab several Dals and
Sanghs, the total number of members of which is approximately about
50,000, but they are not working under a single organisation. There are
Rashtriya Sevak Sangh, Atma Sangh, Mahabir Dal, Seva Sangh and Akali Dal
working under different leaders. They have a sort of military
organisation. The Akali Dal is armed with swords, but the others have
other weapons. The Rashtriya Sevak Sangh has only lathis. The first
thing to do is to bring all these sanghs on a uniform basis working
under a single leadership though not of one man but of a council.

In spite of such mobilisation, the Hindu
militia had not been formed. The government did not withdraw the
existing restrictions imposed on military and paramilitary organisations
and schools.

It is difficult to establish if the
organisations of militant Hinduism were arming themselves against
possible foreign invaders, the internal enemy, or the British. Most
probably they were carefully hedging their bet, ready to take advantage
of any future development. However, it is a fact that at a meeting with
Linlithgow in Bombay on October 8, 1939, Savarkar adopted a decidedly
conciliatory position vis–à–vis the British.

When, in the 1940s, the totalitarian
regimes had already revealed their true colours, the attitude of the
organisations of militant Hinduism towards fascism and Nazism was still
benevolent. In spite of the already, even if only partially, known
atrocities committed by Hitler and Mussolini, the main organisations of
Hindu nationalism still praised the dictators and their regimes. This
position could be justified, had it been part of a coherent and strong
anti–British policy. However, as I have tried to demonstrate, the forces
of Hindu nationalism seem to have concentrated their efforts more
against the so–called internal enemies — Muslims and Congress — rather
than the foreign invaders. While Bose’s alliance with the axis powers
had mainly an anti–British function, the Hindu Mahasabha used its
support to the dictators as an instrument in blackmail the British.


Conclusions:

The preceding discussion has shown that:
(a) the main historical organisations and leaders of Hindu nationalism
had a distinctive and sustained interest in fascism and nazism; (b)
fascist ideological influences on Hindu nationalism were present and
relevant; and (c) to a certain extent, these influences were channelled
through direct contacts between Hindu nationalists and members of the
Italian fascist state. No doubt, beginning with the early 1920s and up
to the second world war, Hindu nationalists looked at the political
reality of fascist Italy, and subsequently of nazi Germany, as a source
of inspiration.

One of the results of the contacts between
the fascism and Hindu nationalism was the attempt to militarise Hindu
society and to create a militant mentality among the Hindus. If it is
true that the Hindu society elaborated its own patterns of
militarisation —  refer to the shakhas as a typically Indian phenomenon —
it is equally true that a most relevant result of fascist influence was
the transmission of a more functional organisation and a stronger
political character to the already existing organisation of political
Hinduism.

At the ideological level, the most
meaningful effect of the fascist influence is represented by the way in
which Hindu nationalism developed its own concept of diversity,
transforming ‘diverse’ people into enemies. Of course, the concept of
internal enemy is already implicitly contained in Savarkar’s Hindutva.
Nevertheless, the continuous reference to German racial policy and the
comparison of the Jewish problem in Germany with the Muslim question in
India reveals the evolution of the concept of ‘internal enemy’ along
explicitly fascist lines.

In my opinion, if one is to understand the
evolution of Hindu radicalism in the post–independence period, one has
to take into account both the domestic roots of this phenomenon and the
external influence on its development.

In the 1920s and 1930s fascism was an
international phenomenon. As such it was bound to influence the ideology
and practice of similar movements all over the world. Since many of Bal
Thackeray’s most outrageously anti–Muslim and racist statements are
literal quotations of Savarkar’s speeches and theories, it is legitimate
to conclude that such influence is still alive in today’s militant
Hinduism.

(The above article has been excerpted from a
much larger piece, with detailed references under the title,
‘Hindutva’s Foregin Tie-up in the in the 1930s — Archival Evidence’,
published in the January 22, 2000 issue of the Economic and Political
Weekly. Marzia Casolari is an Italian researcher). 

Source: http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/casolari.pdf

http://www.ibtimes.com/hindu-nationalists-historical-links-nazism-fascism-214222

http://www.sabrang.com/cc/comold/mar00/document.htm

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh abbreviated as RSS (Rāṣṭrīya Svayamsēvaka Saṅgha; IPA: [rɑːʂˈʈriːj(ə) swəjəmˈseːvək ˈsəŋɡʱ], lit. “National Volunteer Organisation”^[12] or “National Patriotic Organisation”^[13]) is a right-wing volunteer, Hindu nationalist,^[5] non-governmental organisation.^[4][1] It is claimed that it is the world’s largest voluntary non-governmental organisation.^[14] RSS states that its ideology is based on the principle of selfless service to India and the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra.^[15]

RSS itself claims it does not agree to
constitution of India and need Hindu Rashtra which is called treason or
sedition by their members but still Indian government is not taking any
actions against this organization which indicates Government itself
surrendered to this Organization and controlled by it. Is RSS above the
Indian Government and Indian Constitution? Which directly proofs RSS is
an anti Nationalist organization and involved in the acts of treason and
sedition.  It also implicates that it has grown its members within the
Government machinery and other society controlling elements to that
level so that they will do whatever they want to do according to their
agenda. It implicates Brahmins hegemony restored again in the age of
democracy; its because RSS is a Bahamians controlled Organization. They
wants to implement Manusmritic theocracy to democratic India as like
dishonest Brahmin army chief  Pushyamitra shunga did to Ashoka’s kingdom
which is now known as India. They coin an Identity Bharat Mata. Who is
Bharat Mata? Before 1947 there was no official word existed named
Bharat. Its OK you see India as a Mother so its some extent to justified
Bharat is our Mata. Even every mothers of India is respected so “Bharat
mataon ki jay” is justified in that respect. Even its justified “Bharat
Pitaon ki jay”, “Bharat Bhaionki Jay”, “Bharat Kishano ki Jay” ……. so
and so on…. Even in that notion since India is a country of many
linguistic race “Al Hind Ammi Zaan zindabad or Al Hind Ammi zaan ki jay”
is also justified and  so and so on slogans equivalent to this type are
also justified from other linguistic origin….. Why RSS does not respect
these slogans? They say those don’t utter “Bharat Mataki jay” all are
anti national. It means they want to impose their ideology in their ways
of patriotism or in the cover of Hindu nationalism i.e. in the
concealment of “Bharat Mata ki jay” they wants to make India as a Hindu
Nation. I ask why they won’t utter “Al-Hind Ammi zaan zindabad or
Al-Hind Ammi zaan ki Jay?” If they won’t they are no-doubt anti
nationalist. If you expect patriotism imposing your personal feelings to
others then you should also respect others feelings of citizens of
India. First of all who gave them patriotic right to promote their
personal feelings “Bharat Mata ki Jay” as national slogan?

India officially the Republic of India is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area (3,287,590 km²),
the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the
most populous democracy in the world. Religion in India is characterized
by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. India is the
birthplace of world’s four major religions; namely Hinduism (15% of
world population), Buddhism (7.1% of world population), Jainism and
Sikhism. Religion has been an important part of the country’s culture
throughout India’s history. Its estimated approximately Hinduism holds
78.35%, Islam 14.88%, Christianity 2.5%, Sikhism 1.9%, Buddhism 0.9%,
Jainism 0.4% and other holds 0.9% of Indian population.

Demography of British India i.e. present
Pakistan + India + Bangladesh was a place of many kingdoms or princely
states in the “age of Kingdoms,” and “age of exploration,” without any
National name as like today’s India (Name given by British which is
derived from the word Indus/Sindhu, a river that flows through Pakistan,
the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat, and western Tibet),
Hindustan (Given by the Islamic emperors, which indirectly says slave
to Islam i.e. land (Stan) of Hindus or dweller of Shindhus, and the word
Hindu is derived from Sindhu, a river that flows through Pakistan, the
Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat, and western Tibet,
without any religion brand, like presently dedicated or hijacked to
Vedism or Santana Dharma) and Bharat (1. Given by Vedic promoters
claiming younger brother of Rama i.e. Bharat was the emperor of British
Indian demography once upon a time, but according epics he was a king of
only Ajodhya/Ayodhya which is a city i.e. a tiny part of present India
at the south end in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Ayodhya used to
be the capital of the ancient Kosala Kingdom., 2. Other theory is; it is
named as Bharat because Jain’s first Tirthankar Lord Rishabhadev’s
eldest son Bharat Chakravorty had ruled to the land long and long days
back where exact time and area of demography is unknown; according to
Jains, Jain Dharma is an ancient religion & even older than
Vedic-Hinduism., 3. Another claim is, long days back in history, the
land had ruled by a brave like lion emperor Bharat, where exact time and
area of demography is unknown. He was the founder of the Bhārata
dynasty and thus an ancestor of the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the
Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata. Vedic supporters claim, the Bhāratas are
prominent tribe in the Rigveda, the story of Bharata is first told in
the Adi Parva of Mahabharata, wherein he is the son of Dushyanta and
Shakuntala).

Majorly Sindhu/Indus River has been used
as an emblem or symbol to recognize the dwellers of this river’s side
gigantic plane without affiliation to any religion. Sindhu is a river
without relating to any faith or religion, which is badly used to
represent a faith for communal benefits in Hinduism. These names had
been given by their respective governments in their regime when they
were in the power to this big demographic area according to their favor.
India is practically unification of many kingdoms, tribes and nomadic
groups. These kingdoms, tribes and nomadic groups had their own
language, literature, social administration, heritage, with or without
any faith system, art and culture etc. in their individual regime. Now
we recognize major kingdoms, tribes and nomadic groups as a State or
province according to their respective languages like Hindi, Sindhi,
Punjabi, Guajarati, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bihari, Odia, Sanskrit etc.
etc. These kingdoms, tribes and nomadic groups had always involved with
the warfare to enlarge their demography for acquiring resources. Kings,
tribal chiefs and nomadic cheifs were the head of their social
commune. The largest kingdom had ever ruled in this demography was by
King Ashoka (269 BCE to 232 BCE).  Ashoka reigned over a realm that
stretched from the Hindu Kush mountains in the west to Bengal in the
East and covered the entire Indian subcontinent except parts of present
day Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Emerging with the demographics, amalgamations
of their art of living was also taking an evolution. According to
historic literature evidence we come across the race those were using
Sanskrit as their communicative language had written Vedas those were a
smallest part of this largest demography. Now even Sanskrit is spoken by
some people which is approximately or even less than 1000 in
Uttarakhand. Vedas are the proofs of these Sanskrit using clan was
believing in Rig Vedic fourfold class system. These Vedic supporters had
always trying to implement their fourfold caste system to administrate
the reined kingdoms society and always were considering the
non-implemented society as out castes or Atishudras. Vedic philosophy is
based on the faith of God that implements theocracy according to their
distribution of occupation maintained by Purusha Sukta as Brahmin,
Ksatriya, Vaisyas and Sudra. They were implementing this theory to the
society to administrate the kingdom after they rein it. According to
their creation story of Veda, it describes the division of the
primordial being Purusha into the four castes “for the protection of
this whole creation”. Brahmins were born from the mouth, Ksatriyas from
the arms, Vaisyas from the thighs and Sudras from the feet. Each one of
these castes from the beginning was assigned a particular purpose and
station in life. Brahmins (priests) were to recite and teach the Veda,
offer and officiate at sacrifices, and receive gifts, while Ksatriyas
(warriors) were charged mainly with protecting others, and Vaisyas
(merchants) were to engage in “trade, money lending or any kind of
actions of buying and selling goods and services.” These first three
castes constituted the ‘twice-born’ who had, if they led pure lives,
fairly decent chances of going to heaven but Sudras as lower castes
those were treated as menial which will serve to these three upper
castes without touching to them and have no chance for any change for
their present life. Brahmin, Ksatirya and Vaisyas are known as upper
castes those enjoy services of lower castes and lower caste had to serve
them without dignity, equality, education, liberty and property. Change
of occupation and social status strictly prohibited in Vedic believes.
It means Brahmins can’t be degraded to Sudra and Sudra can’t get the
position of Brahmin and vice versa for the other two castes Ksatriyas
and Vaisyas. Those were not belongs to a part of their society i.e. not a
Brahmin or Ksatriya or Vaisya or Sudra were considered as out castes or
Atisudras those were even treated as worse than animals and even more
degraded and cruel ways as they like. In their age of Vedism, Kingdoms
without having Vedic management system were considered as kingdoms of
Atisudras. In the age of kingdom the largest kingdom had acquired by the
king Ashoka who was a king of Mauryan Dynasty,
was a kingdom of Atishudra as per the Vedic philosophy; it’s because
Mauryans had declined the Vedic beliefs. Vedism is a faith of
“discrimination and violence” as its base, whose masterminds were only
Vedic promoter Brahmins. Vedic implementer Brahmins and Vedic adopted
Brahmins of different princely states have no biological relationship to
each others, so adopted Brahmins are also victims of Vedic
classifications; and enjoyed so called high status reserved by Vedic
class system by maintaining and promoting  the cruel rules of
discrimination for personal and communal benefits. Many Hindu followers
even don’t know cow slaughtering was an occupation of Brahmins in the
age of Vedism. Brahmins were officiating Bali (sacrifice) for fulfilling
the desires of followers by offering to their loving deities. Balis
(sacrifices) were eaten by Brahmins in that days. Sacrifice is a normal
word in Vedism. You can find also terms like gomedha (cow sacrifice),
ashwamedha (horse sacrifice), purushamedha (man sacrifice) in Veda and
many Vedic imposed Hindu scriptures. Another example is the Sanskrit
scripture
Bhagavad Gita which  was inserted into an epic called the Mahabharata
which had written by ved Vyasa that teaches justice by violence. The
story of Mahabharata is fight between cousin brothers for justice. 
Every human will agree, taking alcohol as bad habits and gambling is a
crime and sin but story starts with the gambling and ends with the
justice for Pandavas  those had defeated in gambling;  lord Krishna
helped Pandavas to make them win against thousands of  lives in the war
for a simple crime i.e. insulting or outraging modesty of a woman is
ridicules and foolishness justice ever made in ancient history. Against
the one woman’s modesty i.e. Drupadi, thousands and thousands of
innocent women and children lost their innocent husbands and fathers,
mothers lost their sons, sisters lost their brothers, is which kind of
justice by Lord Krishna only he knows or if its said by itself writer in
the name of Krishna then he knows, which reflects the level of
understanding of these identities. How a divine identity with the
position of God supported gamblers to kill millions of innocents  in the
war is a good example how violence is taught in the name of morals in
Hinduism.

Before 610AD there was no Islam so
non-united kingdoms of India has its own names according to their
kingdom regimes and they were having popular religions like
paganism(worshiping pagan deities like Shiva, Krishna, Vishnu….etc.),
Shamanism, Ajivika, Charvaka, Buddhism, Jainasm and Sanatan
Dharm(Bramhanism/Vedism). There was faith war among them but in the age
of Ashoka major faith was Buddhism so India’s first national religion is
Buddhism. When dishonest Brahmin army chief of Ashoka kingdom behead
last ruler of Maurayan emperor Brihadratha  mercilessly and captured
Ashoka kingdom he only implemented Sanatan Dharm to Buddhist kingdom of
Ashoka by shine of sword terrorizing threat of life. He implemented
fourfold castes system defined by them in purusha sukta 10:90 in Rig
veda and included pagan deities of  different linguistic race as their
God with honey coated mind-born stories to control their faith Sanatan
Dharm. These pagan deities like Krishna, Rama etc. can’t be found in any
Veda but they can be found in their created Puaranas and epics which is
fabricated version of mind born stories in favor of Brahmins. They even
created mind born identities to suppress real heroes. They created fake
identities like Narsimha, Durga, Hanuman, Bramha, Ganesh etc. those are
impossible biologically and scientifically which indicates all are mind
born and used to fool its followers. After 610AD when Muhammad reveled
Islam and his adopted faith emperors invaded India they used to
represent dwellers according to name of Shindh or Shindhu which is
wrongly pronounced as Hind. They were designated the demography as Al
Hind and with the time, dwellers are represented as Hindu without any
affiliation of any religion. Later they used Hindu to designate those
are not Muslims so Muslims emperors used the word Hindu to their slaves.
Later Sanatan Dharm used the word to represent their faith as Hindu to
hide Bramhanism or Vedism to make the crowd bigger excluding non Muslims
and non Christians making it as an umbrella. Name Bharat is Brahmins
imposed name to India which had no trustful origin and even communal.
Bharat word itself coined by Manuvadi peoples of India now organized as
RSS. Bharat Mata is totally a mind born identity to enforce Manuvadi to
democratic India. They use slogan “Bharat Mata ki jay” means
psychologically enforcing their created identity as your National Mother
as a God otherwise you are non-patriotic. If you want to certify
yourself a patriotic then you have to say their mind born identity ki
jay means Manuvad ki jay. What it is? Is not it treason? Its ok if you
portray the whole Nation as mother but politicization shows evil motives
and treason behind it. How could you change the national flag as your
wish? They use the saffron flag for Democratic India is not it anti
National? Why and how Bharat Mata use that saffron flag to represent
democratic India? Is not it treason? Is Bharat Mata an anti National
identity why it represent Indian demography with another flag which does
not seems to be Indian flag? If Bharat Mata represents India with
non-Indian flag then what should it be called? RSS use this Bharat mata
with saffron flag to represent India in their official website is not it
treason? Is not it non-verbal sedition?

The
word “Bharat” is not secular like the word “India.” So “Jay India” is
more secular than “Bharat Mata ki jay” where RSS and its sister
organizations are terrorists. Is Bharat Mata a part of our constitution?
Where it is written Bharat Mata is the representative to India as God
or whatever like this? These so called communal non government
organizations comes with their individual thoughts of patriotism and
enforce their idiotic thoughts in the name patriotism and link communal
feelings and sentiments to their created identities for their self and
organized benefits to make their crowed bigger playing sentiments of
their followers; if you don’t support them they portray you are an anti
nationalist. Who are these idiotic organizations to determine one’s
patriotism according to their heinous thoughts? Tomorrow some
organization may claim we see India as our father  or “Al Hind Abbu
Jaan” or “Bharat Pita” or “Al Hind Ami Jaan” so if you don’t utter 
“Bharat Pita ki jay” or “Al Hind Abbu Jaan zinda baad” or “Al Hind Ammi
Jaan zinda baad” you all are anti Nationalist. Is our patriotism will be
determined according to their communal thoughts? Is not it anti
nationalism? Why Government is not taking actions of sedition or treason
against them?