The recent lifting of the ban on government servants enrolling as members of the RSS assumes extra significance in that it has come about on the eve of the centenary of the organization in 2025. Reports indicate that arrangements are afoot to observe the centenary in a massive way on a pan-Indian scale. Is this Narendra Modi’s way of mending fences with Mohan Bhagwat and the rest of the RSS hierarchy?
“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. The influence continues to the present day.” In a paper entitled Hindutva’sForeign Tie-up in the 1930s, published in the January 22, 2000 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly, Marzia Casolari, an Italian research scholar, had presented copious archival evidence on the “would-be collaborators”.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the icons of the SanghParivar in general and the RSS in particular, found great merit in authoritarianism of the Nazi and Fascist varieties. Casolari quotes from Savarkar’s speech on ‘India’s foreign policy’ given to about 20,000 people in Pune on August 1, 1938. At the time, he was president of the militant Hindu Mahasabha.
Savarkar said: “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 the Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political ‘isms’ were the most congenial tonics their health demanded.”
It is for readers to judge whether Savarkar was justified in criticizing Nehru for his opposition to the Nazi nightmare, then gradually coming into its own. Savarkar commented: “India may choose or reject a 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 to form a government or constitutional policy which they thought suited best and contributed most to their national solidarity and strength.”
One thing led to another in Savarkar’s way of thinking, causing in the end his anti-Muslim rhetoric to become more and more pronounced. Casolari says that at the 21st session of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1939, “Savarkar made one of the most explicit comparisons between the Muslim question in India and the Jewish problem in Germany.” She quotes from Savarkar: “… 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 the Jews in Germany.”
This story was originally published in countercurrents.org. Read the full story here.
