Right-wingers across the world seem to share a vocabulary of persecution and hate

Outlook Magazine, August 8, 2011

politics: the right wing
From Oslo, To Nagpur

Right-wingers across the world seem to share a vocabulary of persecution and hate

by Saba Naqvi

Breivik’s Indiaspeak

A Hindu holocaust has taken place in India
Hindu nationalists suffer the same persecution from Marxists as European right-wingers
Hindus abroad worry more about Hindu culture than those in India
The Hindu right wing does not tolerate the current injustice and often riots and attacks when things get out of control
The UPA government relies on appeasing Muslims

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There is something about the rantings of right-wingers, be they mass murderers in Europe or fanatics from the ranks of the Hindu right, that carries a sinister echo of each other. Certainly it would be unfair to blame the forces of Hindutva for Anders Breivik’s killing spree in Norway that claimed 76 lives. The man was a lunatic who moved from just harbouring prejudices and spreading hatred to bloody action. In the larger story of Breivik, the fact that he praises the forces of the Hindu right and suggests a compact with the European right can be a mere footnote.

But what is clear is that the views he espouses in his ‘A European Declaration of Independence’ are eerily familiar to those who follow the rantings of extremists across the world. For instance, he writes that “in the Indian subcontinent, the history is tragic indeed, that’s where the Hindu holocaust took place....” Meet B.L. Sharma ‘Prem’ of the VHP, who got the BJP ticket to contest from the Northeast Delhi parliamentary seat in 2009. After Breivik’s bloodbath, he says, “I am against all violence.” Yet when this correspondent reminds him of plans to build a holocaust museum to record the horrors wreaked on Hindus in India, he enthusiastically says ‘Yes’, but rues that there’s a problem getting land in Delhi.

A European madman and an Indian extremist, both talking of a “Hindu holocaust”. A stretch? Let us not overlook the fact that the great ideologue of the Hindu right, M.S. Golwalkar, espoused views very similar to all right-wing groups across the world. In his 1939 book We, Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalkar wrote: “...to keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.” He adds: “Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The race spirit has been awakening.”

Rhetoric such as that could be from any European fanatic or Nazi apologist. Breivik rants against Muslims, Islam, “cultural Marxism” and multiculturalism in much the same manner as members of the Hindu right do. For instance, the VHP’s Giriraj Kishore has in the past told this correspondent that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women and multiplying the numbers of their community and soon India will be overtaken by Muslims and Bangladeshis. Sharma has in an earlier conversation with me been quoted as saying: “If we don’t watch out, India will be a Muslim country. Muslim men are seducing Hindu women, reducing us to a minority. They know how to seduce. Their diet is uttejak (aphrodisiacal).”

Breivik believed there would be a 21st century version of the Knights Templar, an armed Christian movement, to save Europe from being run over by Muslims. Literature of the Bajrang Dal and VHP constantly evokes a great Hindu past and exhorts Hindus to be more “aggressive” against the “invaders”.

Such lunatic rantings are not always a laughing matter. Breivik ended up slaughtering innocent teenagers among others. It is now a matter of public record that investigative agencies believe that terrorists drawn from the Sangh background planted bombs in order to “get even” with Muslims.

Some in the Sangh parivar believe that a Hindu holocaust took place. Breivik seemed to endorse that view.

The RSS naturally denies everything and claims to be an organisation that only does service to the nation. Spokesman Ram Madhav, always more sophisticated than many of his organisation’s members, says the attempts to link Breivik to the Hindutva movement are reprehensible. “Ideologically, Breivik’s views are more akin to hordes of conservative writers and thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic,” he says. According to him, Breivik’s position on issues like immigration and multiculturalism “is no different from that of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Nicholas Sarkozy”. Others would argue that that view actually gives Breivik a respectability he does not deserve as there is a legitimate conservative movement in the West.

Madhav also says that it “is important to note that the attitude of contempt and condescension of the Left-Liberal cabal is what is responsible for such heinous happenings. Issues that the conservatives raise are dismissed and derided by these worthies rather than discussed honourably.” Breivik would agree. In his declaration, he writes that “the Indian government is made up of socialists-Leftists-liberals...the UPA relies on appeasing Muslims alongside communists who want total destruction of the Hindu faith and culture.” Later, the Norwegian makes quite a perceptive remark and says “the irony is that expatriate Hindus are more concerned about Hindu culture than the ones in India....” That certainly seems to be the case when we see the ferocious energy being devoted to the Hindu project by regular letter writers to editorial pages who live in the US. They too rave and rant, as they undoubtedly will against this article.

The other question that must be posed is: What’s the difference between extreme right-wingers across the globe and Islamists? The grievances are different. The right wing, from the US to Europe to India, rants about minorities, Muslims, Hispanics, or Blacks. In the case of Islamic radicals, they rant against the policies of the West, often the great “shaitan” (Satan) America, and if you go by e-mails earlier sent by a group that claimed the name of the Indian Mujahideen, they were against the Indian system, “anti-Muslim” lawyers and the judicial process. Such e-mails also carried quotations from the Quran and dire warnings about Allah’s wrath.

There is a far more direct consonance between the vocabulary of the right-wing loonies of the West and their counterparts in India. Both reflect the extremism of elements in the majority community who have come to believe they are being sidelined in their own land by hordes of Muslims or coloured people just waiting to take over. Breivik writes that “India will continue to wither and die unless the Indian nationalists consolidate properly and strike to win”. That is exactly the kind of belief held by individuals like Swami Aseemanand and Sadhvi Pragya, who also created little massacres of their own.