-Caveat Lector- An excerpt from: Hitler's Priestess � Savitri Devi, The Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke�1998 New York University Press www.nyupress.nyu.edu ISBN 0-8147-3110-4 ----- Another fine one from, Mr. Goodricke-Clarke. Highly Reccomended. Om K ----- Chapter 3 HINDU NATIONALISM Savitri Devi regarded Hinduism as the only living Aryan heritage in the modern world. In her eyes, Hinduism was a powerful ally in her campaign to confront and oppose the Judaeo- Christian heritage and its casteless, egalitarian, challenge to the Aryan tradition. But her AryanNazi championship of Hinduism also interacted with domestic political movements in India between the wars. These movements were concerned with varieties of Hindu nationalism, conceived as an upper-caste strategy to unify and strengthen Indian society against the threat of other cultures (Islam and Christianity), while seeking to emulate the confidence and authority of the British. These movements were strongest in northern India, where the Muslim threat was more acutely perceived, and originated in Maharashtra, where Brahmin prestige had been challenged by backward caste movements from the 1870s onward. When Savitri Devi became politically active in the late -1930s, such Hindu nationalist movements as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS-National Volunteer Union) were growing rapidly in an urgent response to Muslim ascendancy. Both these movements had begun in the early 1920s against a background of massive communalization of Indian political life. The collapse of the Congress-Khilafat (Muslim) alliance after Gandhi's unilateral withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation movement in 1922 was followed by a great wave of riots, polarizing the Hindu and Muslim communities into conflicting camps. The same period saw the first organization of the Dalits (Untouchables or Scheduled Castes) as an anti-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra under Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. The Arya Samaj, a Hindu reforming sect of the mid-nineteenth century, championed the Aryans of the Vedic era, and the Hindu Sabha had already begun to channel these ideas into proto-Hindu nationalism in the Punjab by 1910. However, only with the launch in 1923 of the "Hindutva" idea by V. D. Savarkar, also from Maharashtra, did this ideology crystallize into an ethnic nationalism coupled with Brahminical authority. His idea inspired Dr. K. B. Hedgewar, a fellow Maharashtrian, to found the RSS, a youth organization intended to reinvigorate the nation through an awareness of India's glorious past, Hindu piety, paramilitary training, arid sports.[1] At this time Hinduism in India was also directly affected by the political institutions of British rule. The principle of communal representation became general in the award of 1932, which made provision for Muslim representation in state legislatures by quotas based on the numbers of each religious group in the population. The new Hindu political organizations sought to address this problem of declining Hindu influence by seeking conversions among non-Hindus and the return to the fold of former apostates through Hindu Missions. After her arrival in 1932, Savitri Devi had sought such a Hindu agency in South India, notably without success due to the greater integration of Islam in this region. The situation was altogether different in Bengal, where the political balance was more acute. In early 1937 she presented herself to Srimat Swami Satyananda, the president of the Hindu Mission in Calcutta, and asked if she might offer her services to the Mission. When Satyananda asked about her own religious beliefs, Savitri Devi declared she was an Aryan pagan and regretted the conversion of Europe to Christianity. She wanted to prevent the sole remaining country honoring Aryan gods from falling under the spiritual influence of the Jews. She also added that she was a devotee of Adolf Hitler, who was leading the only movement in this Aryan pagan spirit against the Judaeo-Christian civilization of the West. Satyananda was impressed by the young Greek woman with intense eyes and an outspoken manner. The Hindu Mission could certainly use such an ardent and educated fighter fluent in both Bengali and Hindi. In fact, Satyananda shared many Hindus' admiration for Hitler on account of his Aryan mythology and use of the swastika, the traditional sign of fortune and health. He told her that he considered Hitler an incarnation of Vishnu, an expression of the force preserving cosmic order. In his eyes the disciples of Hitler were the Hindus' spiritual brothers. With this meeting of minds, Satyananda engaged Savitri Devi as a Hindu Mission lecturer. Her duties involved speaking at the Mission headquarters in Calcutta and also traveling to give lectures throughout Bengal and the neighboring states of Bihar and Assam.[2] By the late 1930s Savitri Devi was living in the "Ganesh Mansion" at 220 Lower Circular Road, a major thoroughfare running along the southern and eastern perimeters of the inner city. From here she had only half an hour's walk to the headquarters of the Hindu Mission in Kalighat. Her route passed by St. Paul's Cathedral with its soaring tower, the white marble walls and dome of the Victoria Memorial, the racecourse and polo ground, and beyond this the wide green expanse of the Maidan park and the bastions of Fort William. The smart Bengali residential suburb of Kalighat farther south made a proud native contrast to these splendid monuments of British India in their spacious settings. Across Tolly's Nala, a minor waterway running through Kalighat to the River Hooghly, lay the Italian Renaissance Belvedere residence of the British lieutenant governor in Bengal, and the Horticultural Gardens, various government offices, law courts, and the jails. The Hindu Mission occupied two houses at 31/2-3 and 32/B Haris Chatterji Street on the right bank of Tolly's Nala. Farther south stood the famous Kali Temple, dedicated to the angry incarnation of Shakti, the goddess of power. This sanctuary attracted a large number of pilgrims daily. Whenever Savitri Devi visited the temple, she received as a prasad (blessing) a blood-red vermillion paste, the symbol of Kali, to wear on her forehead. By mid-1937 she was deeply involved with the Hindu Mission, which ran an active program of lectures and meetings from its headquarters at Kalighat throughout Bengal, Bihar, and Assam. Her work gave her an unparalleled opportunity to learn more about Hinduism, to observe its customs and beliefs across a large region, and to make the personal acquaintance of interesting and influential figures in Indian political life. Through the Hindu Mission she came into contact with other Hindu nationalist groups, including the youth movement of Dr. Balakrishna Shivaram Moonje, Dr. Hedgewar's Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the Hindu Mahasabha, whose president was the veteran Indian patriot V. D. Savarkar. His career of anti-British revolutionary extremism and his writings on Indian history, Hindu identity, and destiny exercised an important influence on Savitri Devi and the evolution of her Hindu-Aryan ideology. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (-1883-1966) was born into a middleclass Chitpavan Brahmin family at the village of Bhagur near Nasik in the Maratha province of Maharashtra in western India. He was an early convert to the cause of Indian independence. Savarkar admired the Chaphekar brothers who had murdered a British administrator at Poona in 1897 and gone to their execution singing verses from the hagavad Gita; deeply impressed, he took an oath before his family goddess to fight for India's freedom. By 1899 he had begun his career of antiBritish conspiracy with the founding of secret societies and went on to make patriotic speeches and organize demonstrations over the partition of Bengal in 1905. A high academic achiever, he won a scholarship in 1906 that enabled him to study in London, where he became a leading figure at the India House. Here he continued his revolutionary activities, raising political consciousness among other expatriate Indian students and learning how to make bombs. Savarkar published his first book, The War of Indian Independence (1908), to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Indian Mutiny but it was promptly suppressed by the British Government. Meanwhile, a member of Savarkar's group was convicted of assassinating Sir Curzon Wyllie in London, after his own brother Ganesh was sentenced to transportation in 1909 for terrorist activities. In 191o the collector of Nasik was shot in revenge for the brother's sentence, and Savarkar was arrested in London for complicity in the murder. Extradited to India, he was convicted of treason and of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to two consecutive life-transportations. He served ten years in jail on the Andaman islands, from 1911 to 192:1, and three further years in prisons at Yervada, Nasik, and Ratnagiri. Savarkar used the period of his confinement for writing and became a prolific author, publishing thirty-eight books in the course of his lifetime. These included poetry, essays, and an autobiography in Marathi; the treatise on the Indian Mutiny and an account of his transportation and prison sketches in the Andamans were published in English.[3] In Ratnagiri prison Savarkar wrote his famous short work Hindutva (1923), which set out his view of Indian history from a Hindu point of view and his conception of Hinduness. A preface posed the question "Who is a Hindu?" and stated, "A Hindu means a person, who regards this Land of Bharat Varsha, from the Indus to the Seas as his FatherLand as well as his Holy-Land." The work was inspired by a mythical spirit, bold generalization, and heroic quotation, which commended it to Savitri Devi and other Aryan enthusiasts. Tracing the origins of the Hindu nation, Savarkar eloquently recalled the prehistoric colonization of the Aryans: The intrepid Aryans made [India] their home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banks of the Sindhu, the Indus.... [L]ong before the ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians had built their magnificent civilization, the holy waters of the Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling columns of the scented sacrificial smokes and the valleys resounding the chants of Vedic hymns-the spiritual ferver that animated their souls. The adventurous valour that propelled their intrepid enterprizes, the sublime heights to which their thoughts rose-all these had marked them out as a people destined to lay the foundation of a great and enduring civilization.[4] Savarkar's broad canvas of Indian history found a particular focus in the zenith and decline of the Mughal Empire between 1560 and 1760 The rise of Maratha power, first in Maharashtra, later throughout India, challenged and finally destroyed the Mughal Empire, ending the long period of Muslim rule in India. Savarkar regarded this Maratha ascendancy as the most important movement of Hindu liberation in Indian history: it laid the basis of a self-conscious Hindu and national identity in the entire country. His flattering view of the importance of the Marathas as the pioneers of Hindudom in modern India doubtless owed much to his own Maratha ancestry and upbringing in Maharashtra. The Maratha challenge to the impressive and long-standing edifice of Mughal authority also struck him as an inspiring precedent and prelude to his own campaign to drive out his British enemies, the founders of another secure and magnificent Indian empire. At the same time, the recent Muslim tensions and challenges to Brahmin authority in the province were an obvious factor in his ideology. pp. 43-47 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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