Which Hindu leaders supported the Nazis?
With the start of the football World Cup there has been a lot of talk about how the fans from various countries are going to behave in Germany. In particular, there has been quite a bit of news about England fans singing and chanting about World War II and poking fun at Germany’s Nazi past. To glorify Nazism is illegal in Germany and people there still tend to be a bit cagey and reserved about expressing nationalism.
June 21st, 2006 at 5:24 am
Good article & absolut , perfect analysis.
June 25th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Subhas Chandra Bose despised Nazi values, but felt that whatever it took to free India from Britain’s colonial shackles must be pursued. After all, my enemie’s enemies are my allies. In all actions, Netaji ensured that if the Axis powers were to assist Bharat, once freedom had been attained they would leave us to be free. What that man did was astounding. A true patriot and braveheart!
June 25th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
I too respect Subhas Bose. He gave his all for the freedom of India - and he remains legendary for what he did.
But I totally fail to see how the Axis would have left India free if they had succesfully beaten the British. That doesn’t seem very likely at all. And I do not know of any safeguards that Bose took to prevent this, had the Axis succeeded.
Overall, the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ thinking is not absolute. Morals and values are important too. The only thing in Bose’s favour is that he did openly express disdain for the racism of Mein Kampf, and even said so to Hitler when he met him. Furthermore, he did not actually know about the Jewish Holocaust, because it only became international knowledge AFTER WW2 (as this article states).
July 4th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
I enjoyed reading this article and learning about these 4 great leaders of India.
August 19th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Who cares what one did for India the country? What India needs is a spiritual revolution, not just freedom to follow in the footsteps of materialistic people like Americans and so on. There is a saying, that a crow eats stool, but a new crow eats more stool. Shall India be like a new crow in a field, eating more stool than the Americans and Europeans who have already had their fill, at least for the moment?
Smarten up India, and follow Bhagavat Dharma!
September 3rd, 2006 at 5:28 am
One should understand first what NAZI doctrine stands for. It means complete control of the people by the state to promote capitalism, not socialism. In Hitler’s Germany capitalists have supported Hitler and their factories or properties were not nationalized for the benefit of the people, but an oligarchy was created.
Subhas Chandra Bose was not a NAZI supporter in the sense that he has promoted socialism. That was the reason for his clash with Gandhi, who wanted to maintain Pricely States, Maharajas, Nawabs, and Zamindars. Gandhi was financed by Birla and Bajaj, India’s top capitalists.
Subhas Chandra Bose went to the Soviet Union first in 1941 to seek the help of Stalin to liberate India, Stalin sent him to Hitler. Hitler was not interested in the loberation of India, as Hitler was very pro-British then. Hitler has expected that the British would join him to destroy the Soviet Union. Then Subhas Chandra Bose went to Japan, who really helped him by releasing 50,000 Indian soldiers (fighting for the British Army but captured by Japan in South East Asia) who along with the Indians in South East Asia formed the Azad Hind Fauj. After the defeat of Japan in 1945, Subhas Chandra Bose went back to the Soviet Union and was alive until 1946. Most possibly Stalin handed him over to the British, who killed him.
Thus, Subhas Chandra Bose was a socialist but not a NAZI. Because of circumstances beyond his control he had to go to Hitler but went away from Germany as soon as possible.
The Soviet Union has recognized ( along with Japan, Italy, Germany, Imperial China, Thailand) the Azad Hind Government and there was a diplomatic office of the Azad Hind government in Omsk in the Soviet Union from 1942 to 1946. If Subhas Chandra Bose was a NAZI, the Soviet Union, which was invaded by Hitler in 1941, could not have recognized the Azad Hind government in 1942.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I think there should be more talk of Savarkar.
Here is a great site on his views:
www.savakar.org
Savarkar’s legacy was highjacked by Congress and Nehru because he and the Hindu Mahasabha offered too much of a political enemy to Congress party and the nepotism of the Gandhi/Nehru dynasty to leave alive.
In this way, they blamed Savarkar, who actually denied Godse as his shishya (although Godse considered Savarkar his guru) on the death of Gandhi and continue to blame Hindus today for all the failures of modern Indian society denying the renaissance that should have and would have taken place.
1) Savarkar was against untouchability
2) He was against superstition, astrology, black magic, etc.
3) He was an agnostic and argued for a logical, rational understanding of Hindu scripture. He believed all scripture was manmade but inspired and thus possibly corrupted.
4) He was the first person to demand absolute independence from Britain.
5) Was the first to call the War of 1857 the “First War of Independence” (regardless of what you think of it), essentially tying the modern Indian struggle to the older one as a continuous fight against the foreigner.
6) His idea of Hindutva actually included Christians and Muslims.
So, basically, everything you’ve heard of Savarkar being a fundamentalist is a lie because the only things you hear about him are from JNU.
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:42 am
Dipak Basu -
You really need to get yourself educated if you believe that Nazi Germany was a proper example of Capitalism as opposed to socialism. The name os the Nazi party was the National SOCIALIST Party. Hitler practiced quite an extreme form of national SOCIALISM, not national CAPITALISM.
Anyway, what more can one expect of a person who is from the land in which a communist part still rules (Bengal).
Communism is a mental disease which has been demonstrated in the cases of Soviet Russia, Cambodia, Cuba and a whole bunch of other genocidal, controllling poverty stricken countries which lack freedom of thought, expression and association.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I communism is a disease of the mind, capitalism is a disease of the heart.
It’s all words my friends. The two ideologies of capitalism and commuinism are not opposed as modern politicians would have you believe. Marx does not deny Smith. And Smith is talking about wealth of nations, not particularly individuals (except as components of states). Capitalism, now and has always been, is an excuse for exploitation favoring the rich. Communism, now and has always been, an outgrowth of the christo-islamists monothink ideology.
hariuam