Italian Scholar Marzia Casolari
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. This influence continues the present day. This paper presents archival evidence on the would-be collaborators.
Defining the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and, in general, the organisations of militant Hinduism 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 ... As a result, the fascist ideological background of Hindu fundamentalism is taken for granted, never proved by systematic analysis ...
... Many of those who witnessed the growth of 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 organisations and their character.
... As shown 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 organisations 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 organisation with violent tendencies.
2. The RSS has been purely Maharashtrian Brahmin organisation. 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 organisers 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 (who) were the last to be conquered by the British -and after the termination of British rule in India, the Maharashtrians should be vested with political powers.
5. The RSS practises secret and violent methods which promote 'fascism'. No regard is paid to truthful means and constitutional methods.
6. There is no constitution of the organisation; its aims and objects have never been clearly defined. The general public is usually told that its 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 organisation, no membership registers are maintained. There are also no records of its income and the expenditure. The RSS is thus strictly secret as regards its organisation. It has consequently (National Archives of India (NAI), Sardar Patel Correspondence, microfilm, reel no.3, 'A Note on the RSS', undated).
Unfortunately the document stops abruptly ...
The preceding discussion has shown that :
a) the main historical organisations and leaders of Hindu nationalism had a distinctive and sustained interest in fascism and nazism;
b) fascist ideological influences on Hindu nationalism were present and relevant; and
c) to a certain extent, these influences were channelled through direct contacts between Hindu nationalists and members of the Italian fascist state. No doubt, beginning with the early 1920s, and up to the second world war, Hindu nationalists looked at the political reality of fascist Italy, and subsequently of nazi Germany, as a source of inspiration.
One of the results of the contacts between fascism and Hindu nationalism was the attempt to militarise Hindu society and to create a militant mentality among the Hindus. If it is true that the Hindu society elaborated its own patterns of militarisation - I refer to the shakhas as a typically Indian phenomenon- it is equally true that a most relevant result of fascist influence was the transmission of a more functional organisation and a stronger political character to the already existing organisations of political Hinduism.
At the ideological level, the most meaningful effect of the fascist influence is represented by the way in which Hindu nationalism developed its own concept of diversity, transforming 'diverse' people into enemies. Of course, the concept of internal enemy is already implicit contained in Savarkar's Hindutva. Nevertheless, the continuous reference to. German racial policy and the comparison of the Jewish problem in Germany with the Muslim question in India reveals the evolution of the concept of 'internal enemy' along explicitly fascist lines.
In my opinion, if one wants to understand the evolution of Hindu radicalism in the post-independence period, one has to take into account both the domestic roots of this phenomenon and the external influence on its development.
In the 1920s and 1930s fascism was an international phenomenon. As such it was bound to influence the ideology and practice of similar movements all over the world. Since many of Bal Thackeray's most outrageously anti-Muslim and racist statements are literal quotations of Savarkar's speeches and theories, it is legitimate to conclude that such influence is still alive in today's militant Hinduism. (emphasis added) (Source: The Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January, 2000)
