Thread by @santhoshd

Parallels are being drawn between recent moves by the BJP Govt in India and the steps the Nazis took when they seized power, leading up to the Holocaust. My own thread here, for example, begins with the Civil Service Law of Apr'33:
[Thread: 1/15]

https://twitter.com/santhoshd/status/1204797105950220288

The BJP, lacking an ideology of its own, obfuscates its links to RSS & Hindu Mahasabha of the 1920-47 period. Its leaders repeatedly fall back on ideas of people like M S Golwalkar, V D Savarkar & B S Moonje, who espoused majoritarianism inspired by Fascists and Nazis..
(2/15)

Savarkar
Defined Hindutva & espoused the 2 Nation Theory
founded Hindu Mahasabha
Instigated others to assassinate
Wrote penitently to the British & got a stipend fm them

Moonje, mentor of Hedgewar (RSS founder) & a president of Hindu Mahasabha

Golwalkar the 2nd RSS Head
(3/15)

All three of these men were enamoured of Fascism & Nazism. Moonje visited training facilities of the Fascist Opera Nazionale Balilla wings, Balilla (8-14 yrs) & Avanguardisti (14-18 yrs), on his way back to India from the Round Table Conference in London.
(4/15)

Moonje was vastly impressed, and he likened the leadership & military-style training to those of the RSS, founded by Hedgewar who he mentored for decades.
(5/15)

Moonje met Mussolini personally the next day, lauded the dictator on the work being done by Fascists in Italy and promised to advocate for them every chance he got.
(6/15)

Moonje advised the RSS on the organizing principles of the RSS, and went as far as to say that an independent India should be headed by a Hindu dictator, quite like Hilter & Mussolini in Nazi Germany & Fascist Italy respectively.
(7/15)

Savarkar naturally had lots to say about German national & race pride, since they echoed his own notions of Hindutva nationhood. When Nehru & the Congress condemned Hitler's opression of the Jews & occupation of the Sudetenland, Savarkar shockingly supported Hitler:
(8/15)

In speeches through 1938 and 1939, Savarkar provided a racial rationale for the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, claiming also that German interests did not align with the interests of Jews.
(9/15)

The Hindu Mahasabha (the org that Savarkar founded and Moonje headed) issued an official statement in 1939, laying claim to a common cause between Nazi Germany and "religious & sensible" Hindus, based on "common" symbology, race and civilization:
(10/15)

Golwalkar referenced the Nazi purge of the Jews with no condemnation, called it an example of the "failure" of 2 cultures to live together & a good lesson for India to act on. Despite omitting the last sentence in subsequent editions, this infamous observation lives on
(11/15)

Golwalkar based his claim for a Hindu nation on a fantasy of past Hindu hegemony over large parts of South Asia (and even America!), as this thread describes:
(12/15)

https://twitter.com/santhoshd/status/1174655849073016833

The RSS as late as 1942 held up Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as examples of the dictatorship that the RSS was aiming for in India.
(13/15)

The party India elected in 2014/19 has its ideological moorings in this triumvirate, supporters of Nazi & Fascist thought until WWII ended & advocates of a unitary state with a dictatorship at the helm. We need to fight this ideology until it can no longer rise again.
(14/15)

This thread draws on extensive research by Marzia Casolari. The article by her on the subject is well worth reading in its entirety
Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s - Archival Evidence
M Casolari
Economic & Political Weekly, January 2000
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sacw.net/DC/Communalism…