RSS: Wielding Imperial, Fascist and Nazi Weapons
M A Baby
EVERY Indian has the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs. This is the foundation of the value of secularism enshrined in our Constitution. Simultaneously, it also means that religion should not interfere in governance. Yet, those who have taken the solemn oath of upholding the Constitution, are violating both of these principles. They are slowly and gradually implementing a project to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra. It is a plan that has been in the making for decades. We are witnessing this in their actions, such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid to construct the Ram Mandir, on that very same site. Implementation of laws that deny citizenship to a large section of the people solely on the basis of their religion is another step in that direction.
Two main perspectives exist regarding citizenship. One is citizenship by birth (jus soli). The other is citizenship based on race and culture (jus sanguinis). Of these, the Indian Constitution upheld the modern perspective of citizenship by birth, subsequent to the discussions on citizenship which took place in the Constituent Assembly in August 1949. Even in the Constituent Assembly, arguments were raised in favour of making religion the basis for citizenship. However, the Constituent Assembly rejected this argument. The position adopted by the Constituent Assembly was that the granting of citizenship on the basis of religious identities does not befit a progressive society. Any nation that makes religion the basis for citizenship is not a secular state, but a theocratic state. Transforming India into such a state is unconstitutional.
Articles 5 to 11 of the Indian Constitution deal with the question of citizenship. Article 5(a) unequivocally stated that anyone born in the territory of India, would be an Indian citizen. However, there have been deviations from this later on. Amendments made by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986 and the Vajpayee government in 2003 have weakened this stance. The 2003 amendment, in particular, included a provision that one of the parents must not be an illegal immigrant. This can truly be called the first version of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that we see today. While that was the BJP’s doing, it needs to be noted that the second UPA government in 2010 proceeded with measures for the preparation of a National Population Register (NPR). The BJP government went one more step further and announced its intention to prepare a National Register of Citizens (NRC). Both the NPR and NRC had to be put on hold due to popular discontent.
The Sangh Parivar claims that the Citizenship Amendment Act will not affect existing citizens. However, the union home minister stated both inside and outside the Parliament, ‘Chronology samjhiye’ — that is, to understand the chronology. What was that chronology? First, the CAA will come, then the NRC will come. That is the order. Those who are unable to produce proper documents will have to undergo verification based on the CAA criteria, to be included in the NRC. Then how can one say that the CAA will not affect existing citizens? During the preparation of the NRC, the citizenship of those who are unable to provide precise answers to details including the birthplace of their parents, will fall under a shadow of doubt. We saw a clear picture of this when the NRC was implemented in Assam. About 19 lakh people were excluded. Two-thirds of those excluded were women.
Even though the Sangh Parivar’s primary targets are religious minorities, even the uneducated and the poor may not possess the requisite documents. Their citizenship too will fall under a shadow of doubt. The citizenship of adivasis and transgenders too will come under suspicion in the absence of clear documents. It is estimated that about 42 per cent of the people in India do not have birth certificates. It has not yet been clarified as to how their citizenship will be determined. This means that crores of people will cease to be Indian citizens for want of necessary documents. They will either be locked up in detention centres or become a populace devoid of civil rights. This is the dark reality that is staring us in the face.
There are parallels in Nazi Germany to what we are seeing in India today, especially with the recent moves by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the guise of revising the electoral rolls in Bihar, which suggest that a back door effort is on, to prepare the NRC. On September 15, 1935, Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws – a set of anti-Semitic and racist laws. It mainly consisted of two laws, the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The first law declared that only people of ‘German or related blood’ could be citizens of the Reich. Jews and others deemed ‘undesirable’ were classified as ‘state subjects’ and stripped of citizenship rights, including the right to vote, hold public office, and enjoy legal protections. The second law prohibited marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and ‘citizens of German or related blood.’ It also forbade Jews from employing German women under 45 in their households and banned Jews from displaying the German flag.
These laws redefined Jewish identity from a religious to a racial category, using ancestry to determine who was considered Jewish, regardless of personal beliefs or religious practices. People with three or four Jewish grandparents were classified as Jews, while those with one or two were labeled as ‘Mischlinge’ – mixed race – with varying legal status. The Nuremberg Laws marked a critical step in the legal persecution of Jews, laying the groundwork for further discrimination, exclusion, and ultimately, the Holocaust. The similarities between Nazi Germany and India today – in content and intent – are so stark, that they need not be explained any further.
Against the backdrop of these developments, we need to recall that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) drew inspiration from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during its formative years in the 1920s and 1930s. B S Moonje’s – president of Hindu Mahasabha and mentor of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar – meeting with Mussolini in 1931 was a pivotal moment in the cross-pollination of fascist ideas between Italy and Hindu nationalist circles in India. From March 15 to 24, 1931, B S Moonje traveled to Italy, where he met with Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. In his diary, Moonje praised Mussolini’s vision for the “military regeneration of Italy” and explicitly stated that “India and particularly Hindu India need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus”.
Inspired by what he saw, Moonje established the Central Hindu Military Education Society in 1935 and the Bhonsala Military School in Nasik in 1937, aiming to militarise ‘Hindu India’ along similar lines. The RSS later adopted aspects of this model, with notable similarities in recruitment and organisational structure to the Opera Nazionale Balilla (the Italian fascist youth organisation). Moonje’s efforts and admiration for Mussolini’s methods were instrumental in shaping the militaristic and organisational ethos of the RSS and related Hindu nationalist institutions in India. They have left a lasting impact on the organisational development of the RSS, mirroring aspects of Italian fascist youth and paramilitary structures.
Early RSS leaders, including their second chief Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar and ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, openly admired aspects of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s regimes. They were especially influenced by the concept of “cultural nationalism” and the fascist model of organising society around a dominant ethnic or religious identity. Golwalkar’s book ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined’ (1939) explicitly referenced admiration for Hitler’s policies, arguing that India should be defined as a Hindu nation and that minorities should be treated similarly to how Nazis treated Jews. This book played a key role in shaping the RSS’s ideology and tied the organisation to fascist thought. Golwalkar even linked the RSS’s vision of nationhood to the fascist and Nazi models, in his public speeches. In his ‘Bunch of Thoughts’, he described Muslims, Christians and Communists as India’s internal threats.
Nazi Germany, a little after enacting the racial Nuremberg Laws, completely abolished all democratic rights and stopped conducting elections. The CAA, NRC and revision of electoral rolls in Bihar are policies of Nazi Germany that are being implemented as deemed appropriate for present day India, by the RSS. That is precisely why the CPI(M) correctly identified the current Indian scenario as neo-fascism, as opposed to classical fascism. The CAA echoes the Nazi Reich Citizenship Law. The CAA and NRC, when combined, create a system where citizenship is linked to religious identity. These measures specifically target Indian Muslims, potentially reducing them to second-class citizens or rendering them stateless if they cannot produce the required documents. This mirrors how Nazi laws systematically isolated and disenfranchised Jews and other minorities.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, especially in a state like Bihar, has raised serious concerns about the disenfranchisement of marginalised groups, especially minorities. This has to be seen as part of a broader pattern of using bureaucratic processes to exclude certain populations from political participation, reminiscent of how Nazi Germany used legal and administrative means to isolate Jews from public life. The use of law and bureaucracy to define citizenship along religious lines and to disenfranchise minorities are dangerous steps in that direction. Taken together, this massive and portentous campaign points to a future fraught with extreme danger for religious minorities and secularism in the country. One can’t help but recall the horrors of what happened in Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. They too had started with changes in law to discriminate against the Jews. In India, these policies are targeting Muslims and other marginalised groups, raising serious concerns about Indian democracy nose-diving into a theocratic state.
Those who lament that secularism and socialism are foreign concepts, are in fact using foreign ideas – imperial, Nazi and fascist – to carry forward their agenda. We must defeat the commuanl agenda of the RSS with the same unity that defeated the British. The democratic republic of India was formed for all Indians, without the support of the RSS, as the RSS kept away from the freedom struggle. British imperialism was brought to its knees with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, Sikhs, and non-believers standing and fighting together. Many brave patriots – including Communists – have sacrificed their lives in that struggle. Therefore, we are duty-bound to ensure that this country belongs to all sections of its people and that our unity is preserved.
