Hindutva's foreign tie-up

Hindutva's foreign tie-up

In this pioneering piece of research Italian scholar Marzia Casolari traces the Nazi and Fascist lineage of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu right wing extremist organisation that currently dictates political decision making of the BJP-controlled government in India. The Fascist connection of RSS is something that was always well-known but not properly documented and written about. It is good that the author has brought her work into print at a time when RSS is laying foundations of a 'Hindu Rashtra', and has started systematic attacks on academic freedom and secular cultural expression. It is not without significance that Sumit Sarkar, the eminent Indian historian she quotes in the opening sentece of her article, is already under attack from RSS along with other secular historians. We are grateful to the author for permitting us to reproduce this article. A version of this article has also appeared in the Economic and Political Weekly.

'Fascist' has become, to use Sumit Sarkar's words, "till the other day a mere epithet"^[1] to define the ideology and practice of the Hindu militant organizations. 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 and, in general, the organizations of militant Hinduism^[2] 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 of the flourishing literature which started with the Mahatma's assassination and continued up to the present day with works such as Amartya Sen's India at Risk,^[3] and Christophe Jaffrelot's The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, the latest book published on the subject,^[4] or the well-known Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, which came out soon after the Ayodhya accident.^[5] 

1.However, it is a fact that many of those who witnessed the growth of the 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 organizations and their character. There is no need to mention the already well known opinion of Nehru, who, right from the beginning, had pointed at these organizations as communalist and fascist.

1. Less well known is the fact that, as showed 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 organizations was already taken for granted. In fact, the report itself states that the RSS             

1- ... Started in Nagpur some sort of Hindu Boys Scout movement. Gradually it developed into a communal militarist organization with violent tendencies.

2- The RSS has been purely Maharashtrian Brahmin organization. The non Brahmin Maharashtrians who constitute the bulk of C.P. and Maharashtra have no sympathy with it.

3- Even in the other provinces the chief organizers and whole time workers will be found to be inevitably Maharashtrian Brahmins.

4- 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 were the last to be conquered by the British and after the termination of the British rule in India, the Maharashtrians should be vested with political powers.

5- The RSS practices secret and violent methods which promote "Fascism". No regard is paid to truthful means and constitutional methods.

6- There is no constitution of the organization; it's aims and objects have never been clearly defined. The general public is usually told that it's 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.

7- There are no records or proceedings of the RSS organization, no membership registers are maintained. There are also no records of it's income and the expenditure. The RSS is thus strictly secret as regards its organization. It has consequently ... .^[6]

1.This document, however, is by no means exceptional. An accurate search of the primary sources produced by the organizations 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 organizations and Italian fascism. In fact the most important organizations 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 organizations and fascist Italy.

To demonstrate this two points, 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 organize it militarily, according fascist patterns. An additional aim of this paper will 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.

1.More generally, the aim of this paper is that of disproving Christophe Jaffrelot’s thesis that there is a sharp distinction between nazi and fascist ideology on one side and RSS on the other side as far as the concept of race and the centrality of leader are concerned.^[7]

Hindu nationalists and Italian fascism

None of the works mentioned in the previous pages, included Jaffrelot's, deal with what I consider a most important problem, namely the existence of direct contacts between the representatives of the fascist regime, including Mussolini, and the 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 the Indian nationalists in fascism and Mussolini must not be considered as dictated by an occasional curiosity, circumscribed to a few individuals, rather, it should be considered as the culminating result of the attention that Hindu nationalists, especially in Maharashtra, focused on the Italian dictatorship and its leader. To them, fascism appeared as 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 reasons to exist.^[8] 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,^[9] and the replacement of Parliament itself with the Great Council of Fascism. Mussolini's idea was opposite to 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.^[10] 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 13 August 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  organization 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 organizations, the Balilla and the Avanguardisti.

One can 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.^[11] Emphasized, 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 already mentioned articles:

1. 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 organization 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 the description of the fascist society and its institutions, especially the youth organizations.

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 the Hindu nationalists were, of course, both the militarization of society and what was seen as the real transformation of society, exemplified by the shift from chaos to order. The anti-democratic system was considered as a positive alternative to democracy, seen as a typically British value.    

You can read more about this from here.http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/gvfs/RSSitalianLink.htm