While our syndicate has been regularly raising the red flag on rise of fascism in India and possible shaping of the Hindutva Republic, things have moved on the same trajectory with each coming day, witnessing intensity, ferociousness and savagery. The public memory is short and the ‘post-truth’ era has made it more challenging to focus on critical issues because of dust kicked up by social media, it becomes imperative to repeat some of the facts and arguments to refresh and update ourselves.
Taking a leaf from one of our syndicate’s article published in The Nation in August 2019 with the title ‘RSS, Nazism and Kashmir’, it is important to throw light on the rise of Nazism in Germany and its repeat in RSS-led India. The Nazi party promulgated the Laws of Nuremburg in 1930s which reduced Jews, gypsies and some other communities as second class citizens because of the Nazi definition of “impure blood”. Jews were ostracised in businesses and civil services and common Germans kept quiet as lost jobs and businesses in targeted communities benefitted them. Something similar is happening in India where Muslim businesses, especially the beef market, has been systematically targeted in the name of Gao Raksha.
German women were told to avoid relationship with Jewish men, similar discrimination is taking place against Muslims in the name of Love Jihad , ‘Ghar Wapsi’ and ‘Beti Bachao’. The swastika is a common symbol of the Nazis and Hindutva flag bearers; Goebbels used mass communication to spread the Nazi ideology and terrorise Germans and neighbouring nations, the RSS is doing it through mainstream and social media. The systematic assassination of dissenting and liberal voices and trolling by Sanghis also echoes of what happened to German liberals and democrats. Gauri Lankesh, Dabholkar and M M Kalburgi were assassinated by the death squads of Abhinav Bharat and Sanatan Sanstha (both offshoots of RSS), whereas the alleged killers and RSS collaborators like Sadhvi Pragya Thakur are sitting in Indian Lok Sabha.
The RSS majoritarianism has now become so dominant and overwhelming that liberals and minority leaders in India cannot defy it openly. Hindutva flag bearers, represented by the Godi media, have coined another term called ‘the fringe’. Whenever RSS thugs like Narsinghanand make hate speeches against Muslims or mob lynching takes place in the name of Gao Raksha, Godi media would call it an act by the fringe.
In 1946, Emil Mazey, an American labour leader from Detroit, was challenged to prove that a certain individual in his union was a Communist said: “I can’t prove you are a Communist. But when I see a bird that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers and webbed feet and associates with ducks, I’m certainly going to assume that he is a duck.”
RSS propagated fascism against Muslims is just like that duck. When it looks like fascism, smells like fascism, their assemblies and rhetoric sound like fascism, the mob lynching thugs act like fascists and their mainstream leadership speak like fascists, I will definitely call it fascism.
Why is the international community and Islamic world silent about this visible preparation for genocide? This is the greatest tragedy of our times; so-called economic interests overweigh any moral code; the choice left with the Muslim community in India is stark; to fight or perish. The ‘Silence of the Lambs’ is no strategy, no struggle; it will make them third-class citizens, something like what happened to the Jews and gypsies in Hitler’s Germany.
Should Muslims in India look for another Pakistan within India, as suggested by our syndicate in the referred article, a state comprising Western Uttar Pradesh, Indian Punjab (Khalistan) and Occupied Kashmir can be carved out of India for all the oppressed communities like Muslims, Dalits, Sikhs and Christians. This could form a larger alliance with China, Pakistan and Afghanistan and make sure the RSS ideology is buried in the dustbin of history. This suggestion may sound strange for many but ten years down the line, oppressed communities in India (comprising 60 percent of India) would need a new homeland where they can breathe freely and shed the choking yolk of RSS lynch mobs.