Thread by @FriedrichPieter

What are the aims of the Nazi-inspired #RSS towards #Aghanistan?

In February 2020, India’s Ministry of External Affairs described Afghanistan as a “contiguous neighbor,” meaning the two countries share a common border. They do not share a common border, of course, as they are separated by Pakistan.

However, as journalist Jyoti Malhotra asks, “By making itself a ‘contiguous’ neighbor of Afghanistan today, is India giving the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s concept of ‘Akhand Bharat,’ which incorporates both Pakistan and Bangladesh, a new lease of life?”

Aside from its perceived usefulness as a second front and new battleground in India’s perpetual conflict with Pakistan, there appears to be an ideological reason underlying the Modi regime’s obsession with Afghanistan.

The fundamental tenet of Hindutva is that non-Hindus are foreign to the country. Yet Hindutva also insists the whole of South Asia (and even beyond) should be a single, unified empire — which, its ideologues claim, it once was.

VD Savarkar, the man who first articulated “Hindutva” as a religious nationalist political ideology in the 1920s, claimed that the Hindu deity Ram once ruled over an empire that stretched from the Himalayan mountain range in the north to the island of Sri Lanka in the south.

This region, Savarkar wrote, represented the original “geographical limit” of what he considered to be “not only a fatherland but a holy land” for Hindus.

In the modern day, however, Savarkar insisted that those Hindus living elsewhere must continue looking to India as their fatherland and therefore “continue unabated their labors of founding a Greater India, a Mahabharat.”

Assuring them that “nothing can stand in the way of your desire to expand,” he declared, “The only geographical limits of Hindutva are the limits of our earth.”

Restoration of this mythical empire remains as central to the Hindu nationalist agenda today as transformation of India itself into a formal “Hindu Rashtra” (or nation).

"Akhand Bharat is one of the mainstays of Hindu nationalism,” writes French political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot.

While the specific tactics for achieving that goal may only be discussed behind closed doors, the Sangh has made no secret about its continued desire for Akhand Bharat — an undivided India.

In February 2020, BJP spokesperson Ram Madhav (formerly of the RSS) declared that scrapping Article 370 in Kashmir was a first step towards establishing Akhand Bharat.

“Our next objective is to take back the Indian land which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan,” he said, referring to Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.

In January 2020, a BJP Member of Parliament claimed the “time is not far” when Akhand Bharat will be achieved, arguing, “The Hindutva ideology will spread among the public in Pakistan and Bangladesh and they would be motivated to be included with us."

Earlier, in 2019, RSS executive Indresh Kumar said that Pakistan “will become Hindustan again after 2025,” adding, “You can start looking to settle or start business in say Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, or Sialkot after 2025.”

LK Advani, who was the BJP’s Deputy Prime Minister during the Chittisinghpura massacre, envisioned Akhand Bharat as an even broader territory.

Strobe Talbott, who interacted closely with Advani during US-India dialogues, writes, “He mused aloud about the happy day when India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Myanmar (formerly Burma) would be reunited in a single south Asian ‘confederation.’ Given India’s....

.... advantage in size and strength, this construct, especially coming from India’s highest-ranking hard-line Hindu nationalist, would have been truly frightening to all its neighbors, most of all Pakistan.

The Sangh’s devotion to territorial expansion traces back to its origins. RSS guru Golwalkar, for instance, called for “the hoisting of our flag in Lahore and other parts of Pakistan.”

He argued, “Our fight for independence can be deemed to have come to a successful close only when we liberate all those areas now under enemy occupation.”

He presented an image of an allegedly historical Akhand Bharat which once stretched from Iran to Singapore and as far south as Sri Lanka — a region he says “was never considered as anything different from the mainland.”

Golwalkar claimed his “expansive image of our motherland” included Afghanistan. Savarkar claimed the same. Lala Har Dayal, however, most explicitly articulated Hindutva’s specific agenda for Afghanistan.

Har Dayal (1884-1939) was a devotee of Savarkar and a “Sangh Parivar luminary” described as one of the “eminent revolutionaries of the Punjab.”

Eventually banned from British-occupied India, he traveled in Europe and the US lecturing and, at times, advocating armed revolution against the British occupation of the Indian subcontinent.

Like Golwalkar, however, he believed that “true” independence required establishing Akhand Bharat — of which Afghanistan was the linchpin.

Writing for a Punjabi newspaper in the mid-1920s, he declared:

“I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan [Unity], (2) Hindu Raj [Rule], (3) Shuddhi [Reconversion to Hinduism] of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So....

.... long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safety of our children and great-grand children will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But....

.... the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these....

.... two religions. Afghanistan and the hilly regions of the frontier were formerly part of India, but are at present under the domination of Islam.... Just as there is Hindu religion in Nepal, so there must be Hindu institutions in Afghanistan and....

.... the frontier territory; otherwise it is useless to win Swaraj [Independence].... If Hindus want to protect themselves, they must conquer Afghanistan and the
frontiers and convert all the mountain tribes.”

Har Dayal’s “four pillars” are already being progressively implemented in modern India. The RSS is intended to provide Hindu unity. With the BJP as its political front, the RSS has ruled India since 2014 and achieved a level of Hindu rule.

Reconversion of Indian Muslims to Hinduism has already occurred in some localities and appears likely to continue as long as the RSS holds power. So what of Har Dayal’s fourth pillar?

If the Sangh truly believes that the fight for independence can not come to a “successful close” until Pakistan is absorbed or that independence is “useless” unless Afghanistan is conquered and converted, what kind of foreign policy — overt or covert — can be expected from....

.... the Hindu nationalist regime in New Delhi?

Excerpted from "Kite Fights."

amazon.com/Kite-Fights-Be…