Ram Guha writes in Scroll-
Last month, a teacher of political science in Uttar Pradesh’s Sharda University posed this examination question to his students: “Do you find any similarities between Fascism/ Nazism and Hindu right-wing (Hindutva)? Elaborate with the argument.”
This may have been a great question to ask a dozen years ago. Presumably, these kids want to sit the UPSC exam. But this is the wrong question to ask them now. They need to know about Deendhayal Upadhyaya or some other such retard.
The teacher was suspended by the university authorities, on the grounds that the very posing of the question was “totally averse” to the “great national identity” of our country and “may have the potential for fomenting social discord”.
The ABVP might create a ruckus.
This column seeks to answer the question the teacher in Sharda University was forbidden from asking his students.
It will fail. Fascism and Nazism arose in a context where ex-soldiers were needed to beat the fuck out of Commies in the streets. Hindutva does not beat Commies in the streets. Mamta's goons- sure. Modi's goons- he doesn't have any. Hindutva is ecumenical Hinduism with a bit of Nationalist bite. It is like the Christian Right in America but with a cow, rather than a fetus, obsession.
I use, as my main sources, the writings of the Italian historian, Marzia Casolari, in particular an essay she published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2000 titled “Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s”, and a book she published 20 years later, titled In the Shadow of the Swastika: The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism
The woman is a cretin. The fact is Dr. Hardikar, who started the Seva Dal, which Nehru joined, was a Medical College friend of Dr. Hegdewar who started the RSS a couple of years later as a 'non-political' (so it wouldn't be banned) imitation of the Congress outfit which was bigger and more muscular and which had as one of its first members a guy who had just returned from Italy with an actual black shirt.
Casaroli quotes a Congress memo from 1940 which speaks of the RSS as some sort of boy scout movement which turned sinister. But everybody in Congress already knew Moonje and Hegewar and so forth. Casolari may know about Italy. She knows shit about India. Some thirty years ago, she jumped on the RSS-is-Nazi bandwagon.
Casolari’s work is based on a prodigious amount of research conducted in archives in Italy, India, and the United Kingdom and draws on primary materials in several languages as well.
Poor thing, she has a living to make by recycling her ignorant garbage. The politics of her country are a complete mess. Indian politics- even of the Dynasty's sort- appears sane and progressive by comparison.
She demonstrates that in the 1920s and 1930s, the Marathi press covered the rise of fascism in Italy with great interest, and mostly admiringly, thinking that a similar ideology in India could likewise transform a backward agrarian country into a rising industrial power and bring order and regimentation to a disputatious society.
So what? Mussolini spent a bit of money on that type of thing. The Tamil and Malayalam and Bengali press had similar articles. Tagore & Gandhi were both impressed with Musso though it was Bose who started dressing up like a Field Marshall.
Spirit of militarism
These glowing articles on Benito Mussolini and fascism, several of which Casolari quotes, may very well have been read by KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar (the pre-eminent leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and by VD Savarkar and BS Moonje (the pre-eminent leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha) – all four of whom had Marathi as their mother tongue.
But they belonged to an indigenous revolutionary tradition which, however, acknowledged Mazzini and Garibaldi as among its heroes. The 'garam dal' was more directly associated with 'Ghaddar' which tried to recruit ex-soldiers but this had nothing to do with Fascism. Why? There were no Commies to beat up. Hegdewar and Golwalkar, like Moonje, had medical or scientific degrees and read about Musso in English periodicals. Incidentally, none of them was Chitpavan. This silly woman has published an article quoting a Congress memo from the Forties where the RSS is described as a Chitpavan conspiracy to restore the rule of the Peshwa! We may make similar mistakes about Italian politics. The joke is that Guha, who is Indian, not Italian, is relying on the 'research' of some Italian half-wit to write an essay for an Indian magazine registered in- not Delhi, but Delaware!
Thus, as Casolari writes, “By the late 1920s, the fascist regime and Mussolini had many supporters in Maharashtra.
But it was Bengal where Subhash Chandra Bose dressed up like a comic opera Generalissimo. Bose actually went off to see Hitler and joined forces with Tojo. The Italian historian, Mario Prayer- who is a full Professor whereas Casserole is an Associate- has written about the positive view Bengali intellectuals had of Mussolini's Italy. By contrast, Maharashtra was less enthusiastic because of the religious question. Either Fascism was crudely atheistic or else it had sold out to the Catholic Church. What the RSS wanted was ecumenical Hinduism contributing to Nationalist sacrifice and Social upliftment.
Prayer highlights Benoy Kumar Sarkar's 1932 statement “Of all the European nations, Italy, as the country that is next to us in range and intensity of modern developments, is from the nature of the case best suited to be a guide to Young India in its attempts at modernisation in technique, economic institutions and social structure”. Sarkar is credited with being India's first academic to contribute to the discipline of International Relations.
Another important Bengali was Pramatha Nath Roy, 'who was one of the scholarship holders of the Fascist government in Rome and later became a professor at the Benares University. He stressed the harmonious and dynamic character of the corporative state established in Mussolini’s Italy and saw in it a way to overcome class and caste conflict so as to tackle pressing social and economic issues in a sensible manner'. However, Roy was aware that India had a religious problem which Italy did not have. Maria Framke notes that ; 'he felt compelled to also ‘naturalise’ this idea to the Indian political
discourse by arguing that “The corporative idea is natural to India and promises to be a very efficient solvent of our knotty problems which can neither be solved only by introducing responsible parliamentary system of government nor by Bolshevism” This was because Parliament would get deadlocked by attempts to build a non-High Caste Hindu coalition while Bolshevism wouldn't get off the ground because atheists are kaffirs whom Hindus too enjoy killing.
Framke's article about the relationship between Fascism and Italy has to concentrate on Bengal because it was there that Musso's influence was greatest. Bose met Musso 5 times. He eventually went off to Nazi Germany on an Italian passport. It is foolish to point the finger at the RSS as Fascist when Congress President Bose later went on to recruit Indians for the Waffen SS while Gandhi & Co were telling the Brits to 'Quit India' so as to give the Japs a walkover!
The aspects of Fascism, which appealed most to the Hindu nationalists, were, of course, the supposed shift of Italian society from chaos to order, and its militarisation.
Militarization was desired by 1901. Moonje went to South Africa to observe the Boer war and learn about military strategy. But it was the Indian Princes, who were building up their own Armies. Some, like the Gaekwad, employed Revolutionaries and were linked to the Bengali 'Anushilan' branches. Thus Bengal had para-military training while Musso was still an International Socialist. Italy did have a big Red menace. India didn't. Italy was independent. India wasn't. This silly woman is writing nonsense. Sonia's daddy was a Fascist and Indira was described as a Fascist by her hubby and Nehru was a member of the Seva Dal and had paraded around in short pants. In the Thirties he wrote a pen-portrait of himself as a Dictator manque and signed the piece 'Chanakya'. But it was Gandhi who was hailed, by Govind Vallabh Pant, as the 'Il Duce and Fuhrer of India'.
This patently anti-democratic system was considered a positive alternative to democracy, seen as a typical British institution.”
Gandhi demanded that the Brits hand over power- including control of the Army- to the INC which he personally controlled.
A key figure in Casolari’s researches is Dr BS Moonje, a major ideologue of the Hindu right-wing.
He was a follower of Tilak. As a 'Garam Dal' advocate he was the General Secretary of the Central Indian Provincial Congress for many years.
Moonje visited Italy in 1931
After Tagore but before Gandhi met Musso. The fact is, the Fascist leader spent a little money on propaganda aimed at non-European nationalities with a view to turning Fascism into a global alternative to Communism. In 1925 he sent two Orientalist Professors- Tucci & Formichi- to work in Shantiniketan. They took with them valuable gifts.
and met many supporters of the fascist regime. He was deeply impressed by Benito Mussolini and his ideology, and by his seeking to infuse the spirit of militarism among the youth.
Fascism had a 'Corporatist' ideology- i.e. different interest groups, e.g. Capital and Labour, are reconciled to each other so that social harmony is created. The disorder of strikes and agitations is curtailed. Congress shared this ideology. Nehru was unusual in loving Stalin more than Musso. Most, thought the latter was okay whereas the former would kill you sooner or later. Chatto- the uncle of Padmaja Naidu, whom Nehru slept with- was killed by Stalin.
It may seem strange to Guha but leaders want to instill martial spirit in their youth. They don't want to instill a spirit of shitting yourself and screaming loudly if you see enemy soldiers. This, at any rate, is Zelenskyy's approach.
At his request, Moonje was granted a meeting with Mussolini himself. When the Duce asked the fawning Indian visitor what he thought about the fascist youth organisations, Moonje replied: “Your Excellency, I am very much impressed. Every aspiring and growing nation needs such organisations. India needs them most for her military regeneration.”
But the Anushilan committees had been saying that back in the first decade of the twentieth century! Gandhi, like Moonje, volunteered in a medical capacity during the Boer War precisely because both understood the importance of understanding modern battle conditions. Gandhi was trying to recruit Indian soldiers during the First world war. To be independent, you must first develop manly spirit and to develop manly spirit you need to train to fight.
Moonje went on to found the Bhonsala Military School in Nashik which is still going strong.
Of his conversation with the fascist dictator of Italy, Moonje remarked: “So ended my memorable interview with Signor Mussolini, one of the great men of the European world. He is a tall man with broad face and double chin and broad chest. His face shows him to be a man of strong will and powerful personality. I have noted that Italians love him.”
A year later, it was Oswald Moseley- once Labour's rising star- who with Lord Rothemere's help, set up the British Union of Fascists.
Moonje was awed by Mussolini’s personality and swept away by his ideology, with its glorification of perpetual war and its contempt for peace and reconciliation.
Sadly, Italians were shit at fighting. Plenty of Indian troops helped liberate Italy so this silly lady could write this shite.
He quoted with approval statements of the Italian dictator such as this one: “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.”
But it was Gandhi, not Moonje, who got the Kaiser-e-Hind medal for trying to recruit Indians to fight for the Brits in the First world war.
And this one too: “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 [is] an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice.”
Franco was a Fascist but he didn't attack anybody and lose a war. Thus, he died peacefully in his bed. Salazar did have some influence on Konkani speaking intellectuals. Through Goa, they knew that the Liberals had been a fucking disaster.
Moonje was a mentor to the future founder of the RSS, KB Hedgewar. As a young student in Nagpur, Hedgewar stayed in Moonje’s house, and it was Moonje who sent Hedgewar to study medicine in Calcutta.
where he met Dr. Hardikar who set up the Congress seva dal of which Nehru was a member. Hedgewar merely copied Hardikar. Consider the following extract from an article on the former
' He was appointed a joint secretary of the Provincial Congress in 1922. (so, he was a Congress man) He noticed pronounced indiscipline among the workers at every level. To counter it he tried to organize a disciplined volunteer corps as part of the Congress. To start with, he selected four volunteers from each taluk. But the experiment did not yield the expected results. Volunteers in those days were expected to merely act as 'charge-free hamals' and play second fiddle to leaders. Besides, those who had taken the Gandhian vow of non-violence were basically opposed to such an organization. Dr. N. S. Hardikar of Hubli whom Doctorji had known from his student days had started the Hindusthani Seva Dal in 1923 during the Kakinada Congress session. Dr. Hardikar was supported by Pandit Nehru. Referring to Dr. Hardikar's Seva Dal, Pandit Nehru wrote in his Autobiography : "We were surprised to find later how much opposition there was to the Seva Dal among leading Congressmen. Some said that this was a dangerous departure, as it meant introducing a military element in the Congress, and the military arm might overpower the civil authority ! Others seemed to think that the only discipline necessary was for the volunteers to obey orders issued from above, and for the rest it was hardly desirable for volunteers even to walk in step. At the back of the mind of some was the notion that the idea of having trained and drilled volunteers was somehow inconsistent with the Congress principle of non-violence."After his trip to Italy, Moonje and Hedgewar worked hard to bring the Hindu Mahasabha
of which Motilal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi were founder members
and the RSS into closer collaboration. Casolari informs us that in January 1934, Hedgewar chaired a conference on fascism and Mussolini, with Moonje making one of the main speeches.
The context was the first International Fascist Conference at Montreux which followed the failure of the London World Economic Conference. However by then, the Japs had turned against Italian Fascism and had begun to dream of conquering Asia. India needed to militarize itself to meet this threat.
Standarisation of Hinduism
In March of the same year, Moonje, Hedgewar and their colleagues had a long meeting where Moonje remarked: “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 or 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.”
Such ideas were current at that time. That is why the INC doubled down as projecting the Mahatma as 'the Fuhrer and Il Duce' of India.
Moonje drew a direct parallel between Italian fascism and the ideology of the RSS. Thus he wrote: “The idea of Fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst peoples. India and particularly Hindu India need some such Institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus… Our Institution of Rashtriya Svayamsewak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived.”
To be frank, that independent conception was more Bengali than Maharashtrian. It was Swami Ramakrishna and the eloquent Vivekananda who did most to establish the ideal of ecumenical 'Hindutva' which could include Christians like Brahmobandhu Upadhyaya whom Tagore loathed.
Casolari observes that “the RSS method of recruitment was practically identical to that of the Balilla youth organisation in Italy.
Nonsense! Participation in Balilla was compulsory. The thing was sponsored by a dictatorial government. The RSS method of recruitment relied on family and caste and neighborhood networks.
Shaka members, for instance, were grouped according to their age (6-7 to 10; 10 to 14; 14 to 28; 28 and older).
Because every society makes distinctions of this sort. That is why I can't compete in the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu beauty competition.
This is amazingly similar to the age bands of the hierarchical organisation of the fascist youth organisations…
If you are as stupid as shit- sure. It is a fact that at every social gathering, the little kids get together and play one type of game. The bigger kids get together and play a different type of game. The younger adults may prefer dancing. The old folk prefer to sit down and drink their tea and grumble about arthritis.
The hierarchical ordering of RSS members, however, came after the organisation was founded and may well have been derived from Fascism.”
But it wasn't. The RSS has a class of celibate 'pracharaks' who go around giving speeches and doing organization work. Neither Fascism nor Nazism nor Communism has anything similar. One might say that the RSS is similar to the Jesuits or some other such monastic order. One can't say its organization structure is like any European party. The concept of celibacy for national service does not exist.
Casolari quotes a police officer’s note of 1933, which says of the RSS: “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.” The note further observes: “The Sangh is essentially an anti-Muslim organisation aiming at exclusively Hindu supremacy in the country.”
As opposed to exclusively British or Muslim supremacy- sure.
Casolari’s research also has some interesting insights into the worldview of Savarkar. She writes that “[in] about 1938, Nazi Germany became the main point of reference for the Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar’s presidency. Germany’s rabid policies regarding race were taken as the model to be adopted to solve the ‘Muslim problem’ in India.”
But Germany's rabid policies regarding race were imitated from America. Hindus wanted to solve the 'Muslim problem' the way Muslim invaders had solved the 'Zoroastrian problem' and 'Buddhist problem' and would soon solve the 'Hindu problem' in Pakistan by killing, forcibly converting or chasing away kaffirs.
Among the remarks by Savarkar quoted by Casolari are these:
“Germany has every right to resort to Nazism and Italy to Fascism and events have justified that those isms and forms of Government were imperative and beneficial to them under the conditions that obtained there.”
This was the view upheld by all countries. Both Musso & Hitler's regime were internationally recognized. Stalin had no difficulty making a pact with Hitler.
“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.”
Or so the Jews were discovering. The shame of it was that German Jews had been ultra-patriotic. Hindenberg was surprised when it turned out that most Jewish civil servants had fought in the war. They had made a disproportionate military contribution.
“In Germany the movement of the Germans is the national movement but that of the Jews is a communal one.”
In which case, Zionism is cool. Make friends with Israel already.
“A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews do in Germany? They being in minority were driven out of Germany.”
They were made a scapegoat and then robbed and if they hadn't fled they were killed.
“[T]he 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.”
This may be true of some Muslims. It wasn't true of European or American or Turkish Jews. They always put their own country first. But so did Christians. So would the Hindu diaspora. They will be loyal to their country of citizenship, not that of their ancestral origin. The sad thing is that some atheistic Hindus in India are loyal to countries which won't even give them a tourist visa.
Savarkar is, of course, an iconic figure for the Hindutva regime in power in India today.
Because he was a freedom fighter who spent long years in jail under very harsh conditions.
Casolari’s book also contains a passing reference to another Hindutva icon, Syama Prasad Mookerjee.
Who was Bengali.
In the inter-war period, the Italian government sought energetically to cultivate Indian intellectuals and politicians who might be sympathetic to fascism.
Not really. Musso was a writer and a journalist. He was interested in guys who were writers or who were written about in newspapers- Tagore, Gandhi, but also Nehru who had begun to make a living by his pen. Still, Musso could also spare time for lesser beings- like Iqbal and Hegdewar.
Their work was furthered by Giuseppe Tucci, the most eminent Italian Orientalist of his generation and a supporter of fascism himself. Tucci
came to Shantineketan to teach in 1925 thus ingratiating himself with Tagore who was a global celebrity.
corresponded regularly with Moonje and, in the 1930s, was also in contact with SP Mookerjee, the then vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, and in the fullness of time to become the founder of the Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Writing to his mentor, the fascist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, Tucci described Mookerjee as “our most important collaborator” in Calcutta.
But, by then there was an Indian Nazi Party run by a Bengali who had a 'white marriage' with Savitri Devi- a Franco-Greek nutcase. The German propaganda machine in India was well oiled. Musso was eclipsed as Hitler rose. Japan evolved its own brand of kray kray and partnered with Hitler. Musso was a third wheel though his people had done a fair bit of heavy lifting in Spain. But his colonial adventures were costly fiascos. The doughty Greeks would have defeated his Army if Herr Hitler hadn't come to his rescue. The fact is Italy made a complete fool of itself in the Second World War. By contrast, the Indian Army kicked ass.
Marzia Casolari is not the first scholar to explore the parallels between Hindutva and fascism.
She is the most stupid. Like Musso, she backed the wrong horse. When she embarked on her anti-RSS crusade, the thing seemed a win-win proposition. Romila Thapar would pat her on the head and her Muslim husband would beam with happiness. But Thapar's reputation is now in tatters. What 'historical research' could she or her fellow savants show the Court in the Janmabhoomi case? None at all.
Now the tables have well and truly turned. Congress was and is a Fascist party- albeit of a dynastic sort. Its head is the daughter of an actual Italian Fascist. Like Musso's thugs, its leaders harbor a deep distaste for the religion and cultures of the vast majority of the people of the country.
However, she has done so with more rigour and in greater detail than anyone else.
Because the thing is not worth doing. I think Mario Prayer has precedence in this matter. But if you look at Prayer and Casolari's works, they both emphasize Fascism's influence on Bengal- particularly on Bose who was from the INC and then was associated with the Forward Block- i.e. Leftist shite.
I suppose, if this lady was married to a Muslim, she wouldn't want to find any Fascist influence on the Khaksars and other Muslim groupings. Yet there was an Iranian present at the 1934 Fascist Conference and I can easily link him to three different Muslim outfits. But why bother? Iqbal met Musso in in November 1931- just after the Italian massacre of the Senussi which most other Muslims condemned. He wrote a poem praising Il Duce. Soon Iqbal was telling anybody who would listen that 'The essence of Islamic Economics is to render the growth of large capital impossible. Mussolini and Hitler think in the same way. Bolshevism has gone to the extreme of abolishing capitalism altogether. In all aspects of life Islam always takes the middle course.'
That middle course consists of killing and looting kaffirs. Why does Casolari not write about the Fascist or wholly Nazi nature of this Islamic Republic or that candidate for the Caliphate? Would hubby not like it? Would Thapar not pat her on the back? Would Guha seize to gush over her? All these things may indeed happen, but Casolari might get rich. Instead of selling a few copies of her shitty book to a few senile Indians, she could have gone on Oprah and made millions on American royalties. Sadly, babbling about Fascism rots your brain. Look at Guha's goo! He should have stuck to writing about cricket.
Her research demonstrates that the teacher in Sharda University had asked his students a legitimate and important question.
But the answer to that question, as those students would discover after a big of Googling, is that Congress was and is a Fascist party with a Fuhrerprinzip.
By not allowing them to answer it, and by suspending the teacher himself, the university administrators have demonstrated their fear of the truth.
No. They have sent a signal that stupid Leftists should stop ruining the life-chances of their students.
And perhaps, even more, fear of their political bosses, who would wish us to forget that the founders of Hindutva were greatly inspired by European fascism.
But Hindutva predates European Fascism. It dates back to the 1890's. One may say that Fascism borrowed something from Oriental theosophy- there's a reason why the Swastika is a Sanskrit word- but it is foolish to say Indians were inspired by European fascism because there were not enough Commies for them to beat in the streets anywhere save Bengal. That's how Mamta got her start. Now she has prevailed and the Reds have crawled under their own beds and are preparing to switch their votes from BJP to TMC unless, obviously, they are Muslim in which case they are safe enough.
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