In The National, Pankaj Mishra is dyspeptic about partition, which has led both India and Israel into a "moral wilderness" of nationalism. (I do wish he'd pointed out that the Pakistanis got a state, the Palestinians didn't.) He says in spite of "fierce PR," India's democracy has a scary underbelly, a long tradition of Hindu nationalism, now ascendant:
Reverence for Adolf Hitler – who is hailed as a hero in textbooks in
the Hindu nationalist-ruled state of Gujarat, while Mein Kampf remains
popular at bookstores – is one of the many sinister aspects of “rising”
India today. This cult of Hitler as a great “patriot” and “strategist”
grew early among middle-class Hindus. MS Golwalkar, the much-revered
Hindu leader and ideologue, wrote in 1938 that Nazi Germany had
manifested “race pride at its highest” by purging itself of the
“Semitic races” – and yet Golwalkar was also an admirer of Zionism.
This simultaneous veneration of Hitler and Israel may appear a monstrous moral contradiction to Europeans or Americans who see Israel as the homeland of Jewish victims of Nazi crimes. However, such distinctions are lost on the Hindu nationalists, who esteem Nazi Germany and Israel for their patriotic effort to cleanse their states of alien and potentially disloyal elements, and for their militaristic ethos. Many Indians and other colonised peoples hoped for Nazi Germany and Japan to at least undermine, if not defeat, the British Empire. My grandfather was among the Indians with a misplaced faith in Germany’s military capacity. He would have been horrified by the facts of the Holocaust if he had encountered them. But like so many Hindu nationalists, his main political anxiety during those years after the Second World War was whether Mother India would be partitioned into two countries; the subsequent creation of Pakistan as a separate state for Indian Muslims pushed all other historical traumas, especially those of distant Europe, out of view.
Related posts:
{ 14 comments }
It was a horrid recognition for me to go to Calcutta to visit a guru who was a third cousin of Subash Chandra Bose, who ACTIVELY organized a division under nazi control during WW2, to oppose the British.
When presented with the Palestinian national movement, he criticized the majority of his activist followers stating "The Hebrews were there first. They were forcefully removed. The land is theres."
Some thought that he was really getting senile and didn't mean it, in fact meant the opposite. Maybe they're right. Maybe he was senile, and anything that he said during that session is not to be considered at all.
I presented a history of Israel to that session, with the assertion that Israel was a samaj in development, that it successfully created the institutions of national welfare, governance, mix of confident safety net with markets in a decentralized manner, with identity and respect for minorities within its community.
The organizer of the samaj movements (decentral semi-nationalist movements), hated my comments. He almost threw me out of the community (a dangerous situation, as the center was in a poor Muslim community that hated the group, and next to one of centers of one of the communist movements in Calcutta that hated the group even more).
It was hard to hear the Bengali intellectual antecedents of Rabindranath Tagore speak so harshly and ignorantly.
The group faced the constant irony, of the majority of its western followers, now leaders within the organization, coming from Jewish roots.
They rejected them, and few have gotten to the mature place of respect while pursuing something different. That strikes me as a tragedy as well as a contradiction to their teachings.
This is not news to anyone who has more than a cursory grasp of the history of either modern India, on the one hand, or WW2, on the other. In fact, just a day or two ago, someone mentioned Subhas Chandra Bhose on here, but without explaining who he was (I'm sure he is in Wikipedia).
An even more amazing person is Savitra Devi. Look her up in Wikipedia, or elsewhere.
Get a load of this crap. This is just great. Israel isnt' happy enough that it's the only other state in the world, besides Pakistan, to be created solely for a religious group. Now they were willing to support a Hindu–only state and were ready to supply weaponry to a Hindu terrorist group but were waiting to see concrete action, I guess in their dictionary that means killing civilians, before they were going to invest their money and weapons in them.
Fortunately, the Indian goverments caught them.
"I have contacted Israel. One of our captains has been to Israel, eliciting a very positive response from their side. They have asked us to show them something on the ground because we have just shown them everything on paper right now. They said wait and watch for six months," Lt Col Purohit is quoted as saying in the recording and on the charge sheet.
It was hard to hear the Bengali intellectual antecedents of Rabindranath Tagore speak so harshly and ignorantly.
Hmmm? Interesting Richard. I watched the Bhagwan Shreee Rajneesh movement here with quite a bit of suspicion. Which usually doesn't keep my from looking at their respective bibles. And occasionally followed the invitation of a girlfriend to do an our of wild shaking or other New Age exercises. I have very strong mental barriers against any person parading as spiritual leader …
The latest experience with one of these movements with roots in India, was about a decade ago. I forget who their hero was. An artist friend told me about daily meditations at 5 or 6 a.m in the morning. I was admittedly more interested in this daily ritual then the context. But that context turned out to be unbearable. They were all Western people, mostly with the idea to be able to have a fast feed introduction into the whole highly complex religious and spiritual Indian context in about 2 to 3 month, and than advancing to teachers for newcomers like me. I made notes and started to read about religion and the India, and started to get really worried about what was happening there. Religion in India is a highly syncretic affair, none of them bothered or even considered it worth to look at the roots and the traditions they were using. The idea of being able to get a fast-speed introduction is simply unbelievable to me. What they do is basically use matters exactly how they understand it. And rather freely bent or interpret them to their own designs. Maybe that's India, but I somehow doubt it is so easy.
It of course gave the core group the means and connections to live in a rather lavish surrounding. They opened a gallery too on the space. With followers simply swallowing whatever they were fed as the ultimate wisdom. The most ridiculous basic idea they were fed, was that they would all be reborn as kings and queens once the circle of the respective ages (e.g. iron age)had returned to zero to start all over again. Their "service" somehow would get them into this state in the future world. I talked with people, since I was curious what exactly attracted them to this tale. All I got were glazed expressions.
I have no idea, why people are attracted to this scenario, but they obviously are.
Woops, here's the correct URL: http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090126/FOREIGN/789310074/1002
Richard, I used the wrong quote. But I trust you to understand which of your comments I am aiming at.
@ LeaNder: People look for anything that will further their own fantasy about themselves; in this context, the collective fantasy about itself. There are not many deep individuals in this world, and secondly, even less who do not "compartmentalize" their observations and reactions. As Clinton said, "it all depends on what is, is." I recall the mother of the girl (Monica Lewinsky) who gave Bill (the white negro Mailer longed for) blow jobs froze the hillbilly's sperm-laden dress of her daughter in her refrigerator….
Bhagwan 'Shri' Rajneesh was an absolutely stereotypical 'holy rascal,' of the sort the West for some reason adores, but he should not be considered representative of anything 'Indian'.
Just goes to show that there's even more cultural diversity in the world than even (or maybe especially) a SWPL can imagine.
I am a Hindu. Hitler would have gladly killed a Brown Hindu like me, so why would I support him?
This is all propaganda. Hitler was a White European Christian. All his anti-Semitic rants come from tradition European thinking (Just read Shakespeare and Merchant of Venice). Mein Kamf is very similar to anti-Semitic rants by the Christian leader Martin Luther. Also Nazi propaganda always showed the attack on the Soviet Union as similar to the Teutonic Knights (Christian Crusaders) conquering the "Pagan" Slavs. So while Hitler's Economic revival of Germany was amazing, no one in India (or Asia) was affected by him or care about him. This propaganda is primarily driven by a few Christian fanatics to smear Hinduism. I am sorry, but Hitler was a White Christian German European. So deal with it. That's reality of history.
Phil and Adam are not beyond utilizing bullshit propaganda to further their agenda.
Siberian-farmer (???), the story of Subhas Chandra Bose is really very interesting; it exposes the nonsensicality of the Nazi concept of 'Aryan solidarity'. The Nazis really didn't want him in Berlin, though they let him come for a propaganda visit — immediately afterwards they palmed him off onto the Japanese.
Rowan,
In the West, they portray a very beautiful picture of British rule. In fact, it was Brutal oppression and devastating for Indians. In 1943, a British staged famine killed 4 million in a terrible holocaust. These famines were a regular occurrence, with up to 20-30 million deaths under their rule. They forced Indians to grow cotton rather than food to provide raw materials for their textile mills.
In this harsh environment, many Indian's were ready to ally with any side. However, other's also correctly realized that replacing British rule with Japanese (or the much less likely Nazi) rule would have been even worse.
Aryan is not a race. It's a Sanskrit word meaning Noble (hardly applicable to a Nazi). I don't know what the Nazi plans would have been had they actually won or held territory up to North Africa/Baku/Middle East. Hitler seemed to insist on living space in Eastern Europe/Russia (Italy dragged him more into the Mediterranean). I think he didn't want to have land near darker skinned races. Why he thought Slavs were inferior baffles me (He thought they had Mongoloid blood?), since Russians look more White and have more blonds than Germans.
Comments on this entry are closed.