(pic via Cafe Dissensus)

Published by CJ Werleman Independent, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project that seeks to expose and end Western injustices against Muslims. Please SUPPORT his fight against injustice by clicking here.

Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch released its annual review of human rights around the world. In its report, the international NGO claims India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is proactively promoting Hindu supremacy at the expense of fundamental human rights for minorities, specifically Muslims.

In 2017, there were nearly 40 attacks carried out against Muslims and other minority communities, with many of the attacks perpertrated by Hindu extremist groups affiliated with BJP. In the years 2010 to 2017, Muslims were the targets of 51% of terrorism attacks, and comprised 86% of terrorism related fatalities. Significantly, 97% of these attacks have taken place in the years since Modi’s right wing government came to power in 2014.

Mob lynching, attacks carried out by anti-Muslim vigilante groups, and gang rape now characterize the reality for India’s 130 million Muslims.

“Indian authorities have proven themselves unwilling to protect minority religious communities and other vulnerable groups from frequent attack,” says Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “There needs to be a serious effort to prevent future attacks and to prosecute all those responsible for the violence.”

But India is doing the exact opposite of that! In fact, when Muslims report their attack to Indian authorities, the Muslim victim is often charged with inciting the violence, while his/her Hindu attacker is exonerated of all wrongdoing.

It begets the question: what the hell is going on in India, the world’s largest democracy?

India, like the rest of the planet, seemingly, is being swept up in the rise of ultranationalist fervour, opportunistically mobilized by far-right parties for easy political gain.

But what is nationalism? While the term lacks an adequate working definition, it is understood best when juxtaposed against patriotism, whereby the latter is defined as love of country, while nationalism is “love of country combined with dislike of other countries, their peoples, or their cultures,” according to Alex Nowrasteh.

Nationalist driven ideals lead towards policy that restrict immigration, harrass minority communities, and pivot around the notion of defending the country from external threats, or, rather, from “imaginary harms.”

Hindu nationalism, however, is the disklike of other countries, peoples and their cultures, but on anabolic steroids. And by performance enhancing drugs I mean the memory and uncompromisingly hideous legacy of Adolf Hitler.

“Admiration for Nazism — often reframed with a genocidal hatred for Muslims — is rampant in the Hindu nationalist camp, which has never been as mainstream as it is now,” says Shrenik Rao, the famous Indian filmmaker.

Rao’s claim is not some kind of frivolous invocation of Godwin’s Law, nor is it commentary made in the abstract. The popularity of Hitler and Nazism within Hindu nationalist culture is both measurable and observable, and in terrifyingly more ways than you might think.

Hitler’s Cross restaurant in Mumbai:

(pic via the white supremacy site Stormfront)

Hitler’s Den pool hall in Nagpur:

(pic via Madras Courier)

Hitler clothing store in Ahmedibad:

(pic via Daily Express)

Alarmingly, the adoration for Hitler and Nazi ideology runs deeper than the odd small business here and there that invokes the name of the most dastardly in a shameless attempt to grab the limelight only cheap publicity can afford. Nazism is being woven into the country’s DNA by the ruling ultranationalist parties.

High school textbooks, which have been revised as recently as 2017, include glorious invocations of Hitler and praise for his “achievements” and “inspiring achievements,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One textbook even thrusts forth the Nazi logic for exterminating its Jewish population, contending that Hitler had to this to a “German race with Nordic elements.”

When the now-Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2004, school textbooks published by the state under his control portrayed Hitler as a savior of the German people, according to Haaretz, and included chapters under the headings,“Hitler, the Supremo,” and “Internal Achievements of Nazism,” while the section on the “Ideology of Nazism” reads:

“Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race.”

All the while, Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf continues to ride high on Indian bestseller lists. In fact, the the ebook version can be bought on Amazon India for only US$0.76. It was a bestseller online in 2014, and today it still enjoys a high ranking.

So, why the Hindu nationalist love for Hitler?

Hindu nationalists dream of an Indian hindu ethnocentric state that excludes Muslims, Sikhs, and other minorities from partaking in the national project, and in much the same way the Nazis excluded the Jews, and the Hindu nationalist adoration for Hitler runs deep.

Integral to the rise of the BJP is Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest NGO, with two-thirds of BJP officials having a RSS background, according to Devendra Fadnavis, a BJP chief minister.

RSS have adopted Nazism because it synchronizes with RSS ideology, especially given Aryans originated in northern India. "The RSS has never disowned Hitler, they also love all this Aryan stuff, so it’s natural happy hunting ground for Hitler,” Jayati Ghosh, a social activist and economics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Mic. “Of course, they need to have their own reading material aside from the traditional Hindu texts; they need some international material to seem more politically credible, so Mein Kampf is perfect for that.”

Clearly, the mixture of Hindu nationalist culture with Nazi ideology is having increasingly devastating and violent affects on 130 million Indian Muslims. To eradicate Muslims, Hindu extremists are inventing new justifications for killing them. “Love jihad” is levelled at Muslim men who befriend or marry Hindu women. “Land jihad” is levelled at Muslims who purchase property in Hindu majority areas.

Last month, a Hindu extremist who subscribes to the RSS ideology hacked a Muslim to death, set his corpse alight, while his nephew filmed the atrocity. In the days after his arrest, thousands of Hindu extremists took to the streets to demand his release.

(pic via the Logical Indian)

Modi, BJP, and RSS, alongside their respective romanticism of Nazi ideology, has created a culture of impunity in India, whereby Muslims are every bit as vulnerable as Jews were in Europe in the 1940s.

What is happening to Muslims in India should serve as the canary in the proverbial coal mine for our own societies. Islamophobia is on the rise everywhere, religious and race motivated hate crimes are at all high times in the US, Europe, Britain, and Australia.

To this end, one must ask what horrors next await Muslims in the West? Frighteningly, the words “final solution” are never too far from some right wing fanatic’s lips, a fanatic who might one day be the next leader of your country.

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