RSS founders 'endorsed' Nazis: It’s well-nigh impossible for races, cultures to 'coexist'

By Shamsul Islam*
The process of Hindutva takeover of the democratic-secular Indian polity got huge push with Narendra Modi, a seasoned RSS ideologue, becoming PM of India in 2014. His commitment to the cause of the Hindutva politics and hatred for the Indian democratic-secular polity has been unambiguous. While ruling the State of Gujarat as the chief minister in 2013 he had declared himself to be a Hindu nationalist.
It was first time in the history of Independent India that any person occupying a constitutional office identified him/herself as Hindu nationalist. It is to be noted that terrorists who assassinated MK Gandhi on January 30, 1948 at Delhi, too, described themselves as Hindu nationalists.
His taking over as the PM was celebrated by the RSS and its innumerable known and unknown organizations with declaring open war against the democratic-secular Indian polity on a large scale. The Hindutva cadres and mobs ruled the streets of India with vehemence never seen after Independence. RSS leaders declared that with Modi as the PM India was once again under a Hindu ruler after Prithvi Raj Chauhan (1178-92); almost 1,000 years later! One leading RSS office-bearers Rajeshwar Singh declared:
"Our target is to make India a Hindu Rashtra by 2021. The Muslims and Christians don't have any right to stay here… So they would either be converted to Hinduism or forced to run away from here."
RSS was formed in 1925 by KB Hedgewar (known as Doctorji in the RSS fraternity), his mentor BS Moonje and the propounder of the idea of Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Hedgewar was in the Indian National Congress (INC) but left it as he was against the anti-British freedom struggle led by MK Gandhi which treated people of all religions as part of the Indian nation and stood for an inclusive independent India. A biography of Hedgewar published by the RSS describes that he parted with INC because…
"Gandhiji worked constantly with one eye on Hindu-Muslim unity… But Doctorji sensed danger in that move. In fact, he did not even relish the newfangled slogan of ‘Hindu- Muslim Unity’." (Seshadri, H. V. [ed.], “Dr. Hedgewar, the Epoch-Maker: A Biography, Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore, 1981, p. 61)

Linkages with Mussolini

This group of Hindu nationalist leaders declared India to be a Hindu nation where the main enemies were Muslims and Christians of India. According to them Muslims and Christians remained out of this nationhood because they did not assimilate into the Hindu cultural heritage or the Hindu religion. Savarkar argued that they…
"cannot be recognized as Hindus; as since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased to own Hindu civilisation [Sanskriti] as a whole. They belong, or feel that they belong to, a cultural unit altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes and their hero-worship, their fairs and their festivals, their ideals and their outlook on-life, have now ceased to be common with ours." (Savarkar, V. D., “Hindutva”, Delhi: Bharti Sahitya Sadan, 1989; sixth edition, p. 88)
Indian Muslims and Christians were thus 'emigrants' following foreign religions, and not entitled to be part of the Indian nation which was a Hindu nation. In order to tackle the Muslims and Christian 'problem' they found Nazi and fascist projects of cleansing Jews very attractive.
The Italian researcher, Marzia Casolari, has done pioneering work in making public the direct linkages between RSS and Mussolini based on Moonje's diary. Moonje, "a politician strictly related to the RSS" had man-to-man meeting with Mussolini on March 19, 1931 (3.00 pm) at Rome. According to Moonje's own diary he told Mussolini that…
"I just saw this morning and afternoon the Balilla [Italian Fascist Youth Organization] and the Fascist Organisations and I was much impressed. Italy needs them for her development and prosperity…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.’"
According to Moonje's diary immediately after his return from Rome he called upon Hindu nationalist leaders to…
"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."
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 the Italian and German lines. Moonje called upon the gathering that they should work 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 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…"
According to Marzia, Moonje publicly admitted that his idea of militarily reorganizing 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’ declared 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 of dead and wounded while causing the utmost possible to the adversary". (All quotes from Casolari, Marzia’s ‘Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930’s-Archival Evidence’, “Economic & Political Weekly”, January 22, 2000, p. 221)
The renowned Indian historian, Prof Ramchandra Guha, underscoring the continuation of fascist Italian legacy by the current RSS-BJP regime wrote recently:
"The Italian State of the 1920s bears a striking resemblance to Modi’s regime today which speaks respectfully of the Constitution while blatantly violating its spirit and essence, which appeals to ancient wisdom while displaying a contempt for modern science, which claims to exalt ancient culture while manifesting an utter philistinism in practice…
"Benito Mussolini and his fascists thought they would rule Italy forever. Narendra Modi and the BJP think likewise. These fantasies of eternal rule will not come to fruition; but so long as the present regime remains in power, it will continue to extract a horrendous cost -- in economic, political, social, and moral terms. Italy took decades to recover from the ravages of Mussolini and his party; India may take even longer to recover from the ravages of Modi and his party."

Why RSS celebrated the Holocaust

The most prominent ideologue of the RSS, MS Golwalkar (known as Guru Golwalkar in the RSS fraternity) who became RSS Supremo in 1940 and who is credited by the present Indian PM to have groomed him into a political leader declared:
"If, as is indisputably proved, Hindusthan is the land of the Hindus and is the terra firma for the Hindu nation alone to flourish upon, what is to be the fate of all those, who, today, happen to live upon the land, though not belonging to the Hindu Race, Religion and culture?"(Golwalkar, MS, “We Or Our Nationhood Defined”, Nagpur, 1939, p. 45)
It would be like the Jews under Hitler and Mussolini. Thus Golwalkar glorified the Holocaust in the following words:
"German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. 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." (Golwalkar, MS, “We Or Our Nationhood Defined”, Nagpur, 1939, p. 45)
Golwalkar, finally, following into the foot-steps of Hitler, arrived at the following solution for the minority problem in India:
"From this stand point, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen’s rights. 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." (Golwalkar, MS, “We Or Our Nationhood Defined”, Nagpur, 1939, pp. pp.47-48)
Savarkar went on to support Hitler’s anti-Jewish pogroms and on October 14, 1938, he suggested the same 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, 60D [g] Pt II, 1937, extract from the weekly confidential report of the District Magistrate, dated the October 21, 1938, cited in Marzia Casolari, p. 223.)

RSS project of producing 'Aryan' babies

According to RSS, Nazism is to be followed not only for cleansing of Muslims and Christians but also for producing the 'Aryan' babies as was done in Germany under Hitler. RSS has officially shared the information that one of its offshoots, Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (Uterus Science Culture), following the Vedic preaching and experiments in Germany, is conducting live trials in many parts of India for producing 'fair' and 'tall', 'customized' perfect babies.
According to Dr Hitesh Jani, convener of Arogya Bharati, another outfit of RSS which is part of the project, if the proper procedure is followed: 

"Parents apparently have small, dark babies because they are impure, but purification is fortunately a simple, protocol-driven process tied to the lunar calendar. Prospective parents should copulate by astrological schedule and watch what they ingest, hear and think. Thus they will clean up the chromosomes in their gametes, and the original sin tattering the telomeres.”
Speaking to a prominent English daily of India, the top office-bearers associated with this “top-priority” project of the RSS, shared the facts that...
"it was launched in Gujarat over a decade ago, and taken up at the national level in 2015. Today, the project, assisted by the Sangh's education wing Vidya Bharati, has around 10 branches in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, with more units to come up soon in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal."
According to Dr Karishma Mohandas Narwani, national convener of the project, “Our main objective is to make a samarth Bharat (capable India) through uttam santati (best off-springs). Our target is to have thousands of such babies by 2020.”

The RSS project of uttam santati, a white and tall customised child attempts to follow the Nazi racist project Lebensborn

According to the managers of this venture this project was inspired on the advice of a senior RSS ideologue, received over 40 years ago, who found Germany had “resurrected itself by having such signature children through Ayurvedic practices within two decades after World War II”.
Dr Ashok Kumar Varshney, an RSS whole-timer for over 30 years and national organising secretary of Arogya Bharati, said that apart from a university in Jamnagar (Gujarat), two other institutions have incorporated Garbh Vigyan Sanskar in their curriculum: Children University in Gandhinagar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi University in Bhopal.
The project claims to have ensured the delivery of 450 “customised babies” so far, and its target is to have a Garbh Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra, a facilitation centre, in every state by 2020.The aim of this project is that women should deliver an “uttam santati”; a perfect, “customised child”. The process requires three months of “shuddhikaran" (purification) for parents, intercourse at a time decided by planetary configurations, complete abstinence after the baby is conceived, and procedural and dietary regulations.
In order to spread the goal of producing 'tall' and 'fair' babies several seminars and counseling sessions were held in Delhi, Mumbai, and smaller cities such as Udupi in Karnataka, Kasaragod in Kerala, and Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
The counseling sessions were also scheduled to be held in Kolkata, Rohtak and Gurgaon. The RSS was hopeful that by 2020 to have thousands of ideal infants on the production line.
This RSS love for a race which is of “fair” complexion is part of its ideological heritage that Indians are Aryans; fair, tall, honourable, respectable and noble who speak Sanskrit language. RSS stands for Aryan supremacy and believes that only Hindu Brahmins of North India are from that stock. We read above how the second supremo of RSS, Guru Golwalkar, while addressing a gathering of faculty and students of the School of Social Science of Gujarat University on December 17, 1960 shared the wisdom that Namboodri Brahmins from North India were sent to Kerala to improve breed of the Hindus there.
The RSS belief of Aryan superiority has been borrowed from Hitler and his Nazi Party of Germany. According to the website of the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler even before becoming chancellor of Germany was obsessed with the ideas about superiority of the Aryan race.
He believed in racial “purity” and in the superiority of the “Germanic race” which he described as Aryan “master race.” He declared this Aryan Race must remain pure in order to rule the world one day which was not far away. According to Hitler, the ideal “Aryan” was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs became the state ideology and were propagated publicly through posters, on the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in the newspapers. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered “inferior.”
Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations, operations making it impossible for the victims to have children. Among the targets of this public progrom were Roma (Gypsies), an ethnic minority numbering about 30,000 in Germany, and handicapped individuals, including the mentally ill and people born deaf and blind. Also victimized were about 500 African-German children, the offspring of German mothers and African colonial soldiers in the Allied armies that occupied the German Rhineland region after World War I.
In fact, the present project of RSS aimed at producing 'fair' and 'tall' customized babies is direct borrowing from the Nazis‟ “Lebensborn” (Spring of life) program to create an Aryan master Race. Under this project of breeding of children of pure Aryan race, some 8,000 children were born in Germany and around 12,000 in Norway as part of “Lebensborn” under the direct supervision Nazi theoretician and leader, Heinrich Himmler to encourage women of pure blood” to bear fair-tall Aryan children.
Interestingly, most of such bred children did not grow into fair-tall and blond babies. However, it was an integral part of a murderous racial policy that on the one hand aimed at producing pure Aryan children and on the other hand exterminating non-Aryans like Jews, 6 million of them killed and the forced sterilization of people with hereditary diseases.
The RSS project of “uttam santati”; a white and tall “customised child” in its first gear, attempts to follow the Nazi racist project, "Lebensborn”. As a natural corollary, soon it will go for the second part of the project like Nazis; eliminating all those Indians who are not found to be “Aryan” of pure blood. It is to be noted that Hindutva gang historically has been worshipper of the Nazi ideals.
The most prominent ideologue of RSS even penned a highly despicable book We or Our Nationhood Defined in 1939. In this book, Golwalkar not only glorified cleansing of millions of Jews by Hitler but also advised the Hindutva organizations in India to emulate the Nazis in exterminating Muslims and Christians who were not “Aryans”. (See, Islam, Shamsul, Golwalkar’s “We Or Our Nationhood Defined: A Critique With Full Text of the Book”, Pharos Media, Delhi, 2nd edition 2011)
However, these will not be only Muslims and Christians who will face the Hindutva scientists and lynching mobs but also most of the South Indians who have already been declared as “black”.
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*Formerly with Delhi University, click here for the link for some of Prof Islam's writings and video interviews/debates. Twitter: @shamsforjustice, blog: http://shamsforpeace.blogspot.com/. This is the first part of Prof Islam’s five part paper. Click here to read the full paper