Speaker 1: M what's in quarantine? My GOP legislators. Hello, dear friends.
Speaker 1: I made the previous joke about Ted Cruz quarantining and
Speaker 1: then being exposed again and immediately re self quarantining, back
Speaker 1: in an earlier distant age, when such things were a
Speaker 1: little bit more funny seeming. We are not in a
Speaker 1: position where that's super funny right now. So I would
Speaker 1: like to replace the bit that Sophia and I did
Speaker 1: about that with this new bit, which is a joke.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there's this pirate and he walks into a
Speaker 1: bar and the pirates. The bartender looks at the pirate
Speaker 1: and he's got like a steering wheel in his pants,
Speaker 1: and the bartenders like, hey, what do you well you
Speaker 1: got that steering wheel and your pants for? And the
Speaker 1: pirate responds, yard tis driving me nuts. That is the joke.
Speaker 1: Please enjoy the rest of this episode. I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: This is Behind the Bastards podcast about Terrible People. Here
Speaker 1: with me, Sophia Alexandra. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Robert, Sophie, thank you. I did
Speaker 1: a musical intro for you, just doing mouth sounds. I
Speaker 1: noticed it and it was good, and he didn't like
Speaker 1: malfunctioned like a broken robot like you did last time
Speaker 1: when you tried to intro. So this is really a
Speaker 1: step up. I've I've decided to turn a new leaf
Speaker 1: professionally because I think it's important to be professional. So
Speaker 1: in the spirit of professionalism, do you want to play
Speaker 1: with the switch blade a stranger sent me in the mail? Yes,
Speaker 1: please you try. I got a switch blade so every
Speaker 1: time I come back to l A, I get new
Speaker 1: fan packages and this one was just a switch blade. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty fun. We've been carrying it around playing
Speaker 1: with it. Didn't know how to close it for a while,
Speaker 1: so it was just waving it around. Sophie is trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to close it. Now it's a
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, I'm excited to figure this puzzle out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Chris Goddard like three seconds, Chris immediately, Chris our editor,
Speaker 1: immediately figured out how to close it. The rest of
Speaker 1: us were in this particular early me shamefully couldn't figure
Speaker 1: it out. So I was just I was just waving
Speaker 1: an open knife around for a while, like a pinching situation,
Speaker 1: and just like we're good with oshow right, Sophie. Okay,
Speaker 1: Sophie says, everything I do is fine. So, Sophia, have
Speaker 1: you heard about non Dram Moody? No? Oh boy, Well
Speaker 1: he's the Prime Minister of India, and you heard about
Speaker 1: how like a couple of couple three weeks ago, there
Speaker 1: was that umagram in uh New Delhi where like mobs
Speaker 1: of angry Hindu extremists were chasing Muslims through the street
Speaker 1: and killed dozens of them. Um. Not as familiar as
Speaker 1: I should be. Oh boy, Yeah that happened. Um, And
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about everything that led up to
Speaker 1: that happening. Um. So this is gonna be a fun one.
Speaker 1: Fascism come. You know how sometimes countries are like functioning
Speaker 1: democracies for a long time and then a fascist gets
Speaker 1: in charge and you realize that, like, oh man, everybody
Speaker 1: was still way more racist than I gave him credit for. Shit.
Speaker 1: You know that happens in some countries. What do you mean?
Speaker 1: And where I don't can't relate to that at all.
Speaker 1: Yesterday we're talking about something that has only happened in
Speaker 1: India and nowhere else, and it's currently not ongoing, yes,
Speaker 1: anywhere near or around US. I love talking about things
Speaker 1: that every single person listening to this podcast hasn't experienced
Speaker 1: in their own country. That's my favorite thing to talk
Speaker 1: about on this podcast. Good times. So yeah, hey, just
Speaker 1: quick question, how many dead babies in this episode? I
Speaker 1: just need to know how much to steal myself for this.
Speaker 1: There's like one paragraph we talk about a couple, but
Speaker 1: other than that, it's mostly the stution of murdered adults. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty light on that. Okay, do you like me
Speaker 1: more or less now that you're only having me? Now
Speaker 1: that you're not e me on only dead children episodes?
Speaker 1: You know what it is, Sophia. I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like you know when you when you when you
Speaker 1: get into a new relationship with somebody, like you stay
Speaker 1: with what's comfortable for a while, And so we stayed
Speaker 1: on the dead baby train for a little while because
Speaker 1: it made you feel safe. Could make me feel safe.
Speaker 1: But now I'm willing to experiment with fascist foreign political leaders. Oh,
Speaker 1: you want to invite a fascist into our relationship? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. There's always a point in every relationship where
Speaker 1: you invite a fascist strong man and you freaky, let's
Speaker 1: do this. That's why they keep winning, actually, because you
Speaker 1: just want to bring him in. You can't keep him
Speaker 1: out of your bedroom. You just like to dom and
Speaker 1: I appreciate that about you. Oh boy, this is gonna
Speaker 1: feel so much less comfortable after we get to all
Speaker 1: the murdered people. I mean, that's why I'm really getting
Speaker 1: it in right now. So I'm gonna start by talking
Speaker 1: a little bit about Nazism in India. As you know,
Speaker 1: big fan, big fan of Nazism in India are really
Speaker 1: as a June nothing warms in my heart. So Nazism
Speaker 1: in India have a long, strange history that's really really
Speaker 1: difficult to talk about. As we discussed in our Savitri
Speaker 1: Devi episodes, the O G Nazis were obsessed with India
Speaker 1: as the homeland of the ancient Arians that they idolized.
Speaker 1: Uh and the S S on an Airba, which was
Speaker 1: like the s S Archaeological Division, actually sent expeditions into
Speaker 1: Tibet and northern India to seek out the origins of
Speaker 1: their mythical superman. So like, how heartwarming that they had
Speaker 1: enough time to like follow this beautiful they really thread
Speaker 1: dial they were like murdering all across Europe. Is just
Speaker 1: so sweet that they were like you know what, let's
Speaker 1: explore a little bit of some something mystical. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was when they were sending this at was like kind
Speaker 1: of the slow murder period where they were like they
Speaker 1: hadn't because there weren't that many like Jewish people actually
Speaker 1: in Germany proper, so they really hadn't ramped up the
Speaker 1: killing yet and it were mostly doing weird ship and
Speaker 1: murdering their political opponents and then pre crystall locked. No,
Speaker 1: but it's it's pre um invasion of Poland and stuff,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's like pre the start of actual hostilities.
Speaker 1: So they they're they're definitely killing a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but like by Nazis Anderds, they haven't really got into Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's have a little bit of archaeology with our our
Speaker 1: murder appetizers, just like a like a slow ramp up.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Like I'm not gonna make an edge in
Speaker 1: comment here. Um. So, while the ideological underpinnings of Nazism
Speaker 1: did not get really any purchase in the Indian subcontinent
Speaker 1: during the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, many Indians on
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany as a potential ally in their battle against
Speaker 1: British imperialism. So one of the tough things to understand.
Speaker 1: And this is also true a different kind of extent
Speaker 1: with like Ukraine is UM, there was a number of
Speaker 1: folks in India who supported the Nazis during the period
Speaker 1: with the Nazis were in charge not because they cared
Speaker 1: about Nazism, but because they hated the British Empire, which
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, okay, I mean everybody hates the British Empire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're like a Hindu nationalist or an Indian
Speaker 1: nationalist and like a reasonable person like nineteen thirty, you know,
Speaker 1: you can look at the Nazis be like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: sure they've done bad stuff, but like, let's look at
Speaker 1: what the British Empire has been doing, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: think that's a long history, have been terrible, a lot
Speaker 1: more reason to be concerned. Um. So that's part of
Speaker 1: the support here, and that aspect of it, the part
Speaker 1: where it's like kind of understandable. Support of the Nazis.
Speaker 1: UM reached its height with the Indish Legion or the
Speaker 1: Indian Volunteer Legion of the wathan SS. This was an
Speaker 1: all Indian military force aimed formed at the guidance of
Speaker 1: Indian nationalist leaders Subhas Chandra Bos. The forces were initially
Speaker 1: formed out of Indian POWs captured fighting against the forces
Speaker 1: of the British Empire. So like they would beat a
Speaker 1: British army and they would capture a bunch of Indian
Speaker 1: soldiers that the British had taken in and then they
Speaker 1: would be like, you guys want to like invade India
Speaker 1: and free it from British domination. And these guys were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that sounds good. You guys want to build
Speaker 1: us no, yah, yeah, it was a little bit like that. Um.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that like these Indian soldiers would
Speaker 1: act as pathfinders and like helped lead the German army
Speaker 1: into India when it was time to invade the subcontinent
Speaker 1: uh and Germany wound up collecting well over ten thousand
Speaker 1: Indian soldiers that way, So they were like ten thousand Indian,
Speaker 1: Hindu and Muslim Indian soldiers in the s s. Most
Speaker 1: people don't know this story. It's so wild, it's really weird.
Speaker 1: They were eventually stationed in France just in time for
Speaker 1: the Normandy landings, and they never wound up taking part
Speaker 1: in much meaningful combat, but a lot of them did
Speaker 1: get killed by the French resistance. Like it's this really
Speaker 1: weird story. There are not confused. You'd be when like
Speaker 1: an S S officer came to take you away and
Speaker 1: he was Indian, and you'd be like, well, they didn't
Speaker 1: do that really, like they weren't doing normal SS stuff
Speaker 1: like they even had in there you have to take
Speaker 1: people away. No, they're not really person I don't think
Speaker 1: they knew what it was. I think they were like,
Speaker 1: you guys hate the English and we hate us some
Speaker 1: English again, Like that's a horrible mistake. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: an it's a real comedy of errors. You could get
Speaker 1: a yeah, um, and it's it's weird because like there's
Speaker 1: like photos of Irwin Rommel like reviewing parades of these
Speaker 1: guys and you can see like fucking Rommel um like
Speaker 1: like pinning medals on the chest of guys with turbans,
Speaker 1: and like it's just this, it's it's a very strange
Speaker 1: chapter of history. Um. But they did have like a
Speaker 1: clause in their contract that said they would not be
Speaker 1: used for offensive operations anywhere but India, So like they
Speaker 1: did kind of have written into their contract we're not
Speaker 1: like fully on board with the Nazi thing, so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call I don't know, like it's weird. It's cool
Speaker 1: to other have other people have who have joined like
Speaker 1: armed things, gotten a chance to be like, you know
Speaker 1: what this but not this, I don't like all the
Speaker 1: way up to the killing, but not the killing. You
Speaker 1: don't get to do that, right, Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: only time I've heard about something like this happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems unusual. It's a weird case from the war.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine if that's what soldiering really was.
Speaker 1: You sign up, but you get to say no things.
Speaker 1: That's actually that's actually how the German army were today. There,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, the only one where if
Speaker 1: you are a German soldier you have a right written
Speaker 1: into like the law of the nation that says that
Speaker 1: if you have a moral issue with a deployment or something,
Speaker 1: you get to say no. I wonder why that's there, yea,
Speaker 1: I wonder why they have that rule. Um. So, after
Speaker 1: the war, India gained her independence on the back of
Speaker 1: a fundamentally peaceful movement. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the chief
Speaker 1: architects of independence, was assassinated though by a member of
Speaker 1: the r s S, a Hindu nationalist political party with
Speaker 1: ties to Savitri Devi, the birth mother of esoteric Hitlerism,
Speaker 1: who we talked about a few weeks ago. India and
Speaker 1: Pakistan split apart to in large part to fears by
Speaker 1: Indian Muslims that they would be dominated by Hindus in
Speaker 1: any democratic system. This mass migration resulted in what some
Speaker 1: have termed a mutual genocide, killing well over a million people,
Speaker 1: possibly like as much as three million people. It was
Speaker 1: a horrific, horrific like the split of Indian Pakistan, which
Speaker 1: is unbelievably violent, and it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: like you'd be really hard pressed to like lockdown like
Speaker 1: a side that was like mutual. I've never heard again
Speaker 1: the term mutual was just in the mutual genocide is
Speaker 1: an insane name and also the name of my death
Speaker 1: metal band. Yeah, it is a good name for a
Speaker 1: metal band. Yeah, And it's this is all a very
Speaker 1: complicated history, but there so you can see there's like
Speaker 1: this huge tension between so India is simultaneously has more
Speaker 1: Muslims than any other country on Earth, but is also
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people in it or Hindu um.
Speaker 1: And this has been a problem for a while in
Speaker 1: terms of like um violent uh differences between the two groups,
Speaker 1: in part because like at different points one group or
Speaker 1: another has like ruled the nation and the other people,
Speaker 1: particularly for a long time the like there was like
Speaker 1: a Muslim conquest of India and the Mogal's ruled and
Speaker 1: it was like, so this is like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of history here that we're not going to get to
Speaker 1: cover in enough depth. But the fact that like the
Speaker 1: partitioning of Indian Pakistan goes as violently as it does
Speaker 1: um uh says something about the state of affairs at
Speaker 1: the time, and it's it's worth noting that like a
Speaker 1: lot of that also goes on the British because there
Speaker 1: were ways to have handled this that we're smarter and
Speaker 1: and more understanding and would have resulted in less death.
Speaker 1: But England was just like fuck it, We'll just here.
Speaker 1: We drew a map like this seems good to us.
Speaker 1: You guys, figure out how to implement it, um, But
Speaker 1: we already drew the map. We can't change it just
Speaker 1: because people are dying. The map is already drawn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's probably worth noting that it's unlikely any of
Speaker 1: this would be happening if the British hadn't ruled India
Speaker 1: for a couple of hundred years. But Anderson gets angry
Speaker 1: when I talked about the British Empire's She's dressed in
Speaker 1: a really smart like British tweed right now. She likes
Speaker 1: Royals and she does not funk around when she's dressed
Speaker 1: to the nines. Is Royals, the show about the British
Speaker 1: Royal family. Can I get the word tree? Is that
Speaker 1: the one everyone's watching anyway? So um. In the decades
Speaker 1: since the partitioning of India, the nation of India lurched
Speaker 1: forward to take its place as the planet's largest democracy.
Speaker 1: Elections and crises came and went, and India took its
Speaker 1: place again as an independent power on the world stage.
Speaker 1: Americans grew increasingly obsessed with the subcontinent as a source
Speaker 1: of ancient wisdom and as a great vacation destination, and
Speaker 1: at the same time Indians grew well, can I tell
Speaker 1: you something, nothing has changed? Look at any white girls Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. One of the neat things about going
Speaker 1: to India, particularly to New Delhi, is how many uh,
Speaker 1: like young American like nineteen and twenty year olds you
Speaker 1: meet there having like massive existential crises because New Delhi
Speaker 1: is a hard fucking city to land in, like it is,
Speaker 1: it is a shock. There's so many more people than
Speaker 1: you'd expect, it moves so fast, it is so polluted,
Speaker 1: um and so like like like people just have massive
Speaker 1: panic attacks and there's like this whole industry based on
Speaker 1: Like you see some rich, panicking kid who like didn't
Speaker 1: realize what it was really going to be like to
Speaker 1: be in a city like that, and you like come
Speaker 1: up to him and be like, you want to get
Speaker 1: out of Delhi, right, you want to visit like one
Speaker 1: of these vacations spots And he's like yeah, and they're
Speaker 1: like all of the trains are shut down, there's no
Speaker 1: busses leaving the town. But I got a bus that
Speaker 1: you can sharter And then like they've paid three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to rent a bus for a week. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what a sweet fucking hustle. It's it's pretty fun to watch.
Speaker 1: I'm learning so much. Yeah. So at the same time
Speaker 1: as all of this happened, uh, Indian or a number
Speaker 1: of people in India grew increasingly obsessed with the theories
Speaker 1: and iconography of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement, and
Speaker 1: the reason behind this was complex and confusing. It ranges
Speaker 1: widely from more or less harmless stuff, like the term
Speaker 1: Hitler has become a common Bollywood insult for characters who
Speaker 1: act badly, like you know, you're yeah, like like like
Speaker 1: just sort of being a total Hitler right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so awesome. We should do this, we should do
Speaker 1: that one more. Um But it it kind of hints
Speaker 1: at something, which is that like Hitler and the legacy
Speaker 1: of the Nazis isn't really seen kind of the same
Speaker 1: way over there as it is here because it's way
Speaker 1: more distant, right, Like all of that those politics are
Speaker 1: more distant to people there. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: you get some weird examples of um, like, every couple
Speaker 1: of years, there'll be a story of just like some
Speaker 1: shop opening up in Delhi or some other city in
Speaker 1: India that's like at a huge swastika on the front
Speaker 1: or like a picture of Hitler, and it's like usually
Speaker 1: when you read articles interviewing the shop owner, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything about him. I just thought
Speaker 1: like the imagery was cool. It's like it's very strange.
Speaker 1: Um so uh crossword and Indian bookseller sold twenty five
Speaker 1: copies of mind comp in three years. Jaco, another Indian
Speaker 1: book merchant, sold a hundred thousand copies in seven years.
Speaker 1: Hitler's Manifesto was translated into Gujarati Hindi Uh malayal Malay
Speaker 1: Alan Malay all Um jesus, I'm so sorry to all
Speaker 1: of the people of Southeast um Asia that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be butchering words from um Bengali and to mill And
Speaker 1: it's sold solidly across the subcontinents. So you have to
Speaker 1: way hear about da Vinci code man we had in
Speaker 1: the nights templar. We don't want that going over there. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you have this weird thing where like there's this
Speaker 1: mix of the history of nazism't being less immediate in
Speaker 1: India and so like people you know, like adopt the
Speaker 1: term Hitler as a general insult. And but also this
Speaker 1: weird phenomenon of like Hitler's actual words selling very well
Speaker 1: in chunks of India. And what makes this unsettling is
Speaker 1: that the book is not being sold there as a
Speaker 1: historic text instead. Mine comp has achieved popularity in India
Speaker 1: is a sort of self help book, a guide to
Speaker 1: success for Hindu businessman. It's not great. What the fuck? Yeah?
Speaker 1: A guide to success. Yeah, he's like they're Tim Ferris,
Speaker 1: you know, not they're Tim Fair, but like a subculture
Speaker 1: within like the the Hindu business community. He's like a
Speaker 1: Tim Ferris tie figure, like a great product productivity. Uh, Guru,
Speaker 1: like set a timer for thirty minutes and then when
Speaker 1: it goes off, you kill all the Jews. I found
Speaker 1: a CBS news article that interviewed to Ruin Sinkhole, a
Speaker 1: management student at New Delhi's Institute of Technology, was like,
Speaker 1: without the final solution, I would have never passed my
Speaker 1: marketing laws. We need a final solution to get in
Speaker 1: these products off the shelves. I'll tell you what. Uh.
Speaker 1: He read Mind so this guy to run red mind
Speaker 1: comp as an undergraduate, and he found it inspiring and
Speaker 1: he told CBS quote, it serves as a reminder that
Speaker 1: nothing is unachievable. He said, it doesn't matter how many
Speaker 1: millions of people you dream of killing from, how many
Speaker 1: different kinds of groups you got this. You want to
Speaker 1: kill three, you want to kill six? You want to
Speaker 1: kill eleven? You got this after that point. This does
Speaker 1: them back to my frequent refrain on this show that like,
Speaker 1: people should not, as often as they are, be encouraged
Speaker 1: to follow their dreams. Some people's dreams are garbage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people's dreams not good. So yeah, he said, it serves
Speaker 1: as a reminder that nothing is unachievable, and he added
Speaker 1: that He added that he was able to separate that
Speaker 1: message of empowerment from the book's pervasive anti Semitic ideology.
Speaker 1: So you gotta cut out all the jew hatred. But
Speaker 1: there's some good stuff. The old I read Playboy for
Speaker 1: the articles defends I read Hitler for the management advice exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about, mind com Yeah, I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: there's some juice stuff in there, but mostly what I
Speaker 1: thought about was efficiency. Mostly it taught me how to
Speaker 1: really set up an organization. Yeah, it taught me management skills,
Speaker 1: how to talk to people before you killed them, obviously,
Speaker 1: but you know it was very helpful, and you know,
Speaker 1: in luring people to their deaths, it really helped. It's
Speaker 1: wild because, like, if you actually look into how the
Speaker 1: Third Reich was managed, it was a complete ship show
Speaker 1: and Hitler was terrible at it and the only reason
Speaker 1: they had as much military success as they did is
Speaker 1: decades of primarily Prussian military ingenuity. That like, but it
Speaker 1: like he wasn't good as a manager. Is this is
Speaker 1: the core of the point. But I guess people miss that.
Speaker 1: Um So. In two thousand ten, Bollywood director Nolan Sing
Speaker 1: announced his plan to produce a movie titled Dear Friend Hitler,
Speaker 1: um which was shall we say, a different take at all?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I don't need to register my
Speaker 1: script with a w G anymore. That's clearly someone's taken
Speaker 1: my idea. That's a bummer Hitler colin not so bad,
Speaker 1: I do. That was also another version of I mean
Speaker 1: that was a musical, But I have an idea for
Speaker 1: a script that I yeah, you want to just throw
Speaker 1: it out here, nobody steal this. It's called Reverse Hitler,
Speaker 1: the Hitler with a Heart of Gold, and it's about
Speaker 1: a clone of Hitler, that's his opposite, whose goal is
Speaker 1: to and it can either be I actually think this
Speaker 1: might work best as like a Netflix mini series. His
Speaker 1: goal is to get six million Jewish couples pregnant. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, how about anti Hitler Anti Hitler. We can
Speaker 1: workshop the title. Yeah, and you know what else, we
Speaker 1: can stay on board with this. Let's make this happen.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want this to slip away. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: we can make some bank off of this, dude, anti
Speaker 1: Hitler Hunters is popular and that ship is trash. It is.
Speaker 1: It's bad. It's really terrible, so bad. It's like, what horrible.
Speaker 1: It's like written by people who I think had heard
Speaker 1: of Jewish people but aren't. And I know the guy
Speaker 1: involved as Jewish and the guys starring in it as Jewish,
Speaker 1: but I don't understand it. Why are they calling the
Speaker 1: grandparents soft? That's a that's a Hebrew word. That would
Speaker 1: never be the thing. It would be Yiddish. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. It's like, just have one fucking
Speaker 1: real jew look it over, just one, just one. It's
Speaker 1: so bad, horrible, What about the fucking accent on the grandma? Sorry, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's good, it's good. This is a terrible show. But
Speaker 1: you know what's not terrible and also haunts Nazis? These
Speaker 1: exactly exactly, every single one of them nailed it. We're back.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're talking about Nazism in India. So
Speaker 1: into this inten this Bollywood director Nolan Saying announces that
Speaker 1: he's going to make Dear Friend Hitler, and CBS News
Speaker 1: reports that he was quote genuinely shocked that this created controversy,
Speaker 1: genuinely shocked, the media express disdain, Jewish groups were horrified,
Speaker 1: and his lead actor through it, though a bit baffled
Speaker 1: by the reaction, quit. While such a response would seem
Speaker 1: if anything understated in much of the world, Singh had
Speaker 1: reason to believe his film would not generate even a
Speaker 1: ripple of scandal in India. Here, Hitler is not viewed
Speaker 1: as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of
Speaker 1: morally ambiguous fascination. He has seen as a managed meant
Speaker 1: guru akin to Makia Eli or Sun Sue by business students,
Speaker 1: and an object of wonder by people craving order amidst
Speaker 1: the chaos of India. Imagine if fifty Cent did his
Speaker 1: own version of mind Coom instead of Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be a bummer. I feel like Kanye maybe new Kanye,
Speaker 1: new Kanye. So uh that last line there about people
Speaker 1: craving order amid the chaos of India that brings us
Speaker 1: to like the real problem because while many of the
Speaker 1: Indians who created weird like Hitler themed restaurants, some clothing
Speaker 1: stores did so because they thought the imagery was neat
Speaker 1: and they just didn't know that much about the Second
Speaker 1: World War. There were a number of people who knew
Speaker 1: precisely what Hitler stood for, and some of them took
Speaker 1: deliberately took advantage of their countryman's ignorance of the Third
Speaker 1: Reich to whitewash Hitler and mainstream fascist politics. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: whitewash Hitler. Yeah, it's pretty funny, Is that even possible?
Speaker 1: Kind of I found a really interesting article in Herrott's
Speaker 1: left leaning Israeli news website and it documents this was
Speaker 1: called a Hitler's Hindu's Nazi Living Nationalists on the Rise,
Speaker 1: and it starts with the author's recollection of their time
Speaker 1: in a cycling expedition through India in July two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: They found themselves in Nagpur, a city in the exact
Speaker 1: middle of India and one of the hotbeds of the
Speaker 1: Hindu nationalist movement. And Nagpur they found a pool parlor
Speaker 1: named Hitler's Den, complete with this of a definitely st
Speaker 1: Nazi swastika on the sign. Um. I mean obviously, what
Speaker 1: are you going to take pictures in front of? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Hitler's dead. Of course we all need a
Speaker 1: Hitler's Den shot. So Hitler's Den was not just the
Speaker 1: result of good natured ignorance about European history. For you see,
Speaker 1: Naper happens to hold the headquarters of an organization called
Speaker 1: the rush Tria swam Boy swam Sevak Song or r
Speaker 1: s S. It's a far right Hindu fascist political organization
Speaker 1: originally founded back in the nineteen twenties. And this is
Speaker 1: the group that like the guy who shot Gandhi was
Speaker 1: a former member of the r s S. So the
Speaker 1: cool dudes, one of the co founders or ideological founders
Speaker 1: or whatever of the r s S is of fellow
Speaker 1: named Vid Savarkar. And Vid Savarkar had a brother who
Speaker 1: was a big fan of the Nazi priestess Savitri Devi,
Speaker 1: and like wrote a forward in one of her books.
Speaker 1: And VD Savarkar himself was a big fan of our
Speaker 1: old buddy Adolph. In nineteen forty, he addressed a group
Speaker 1: of Hindu nationalists by saying, there is no reason to
Speaker 1: suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he
Speaker 1: passes off as a Nazi. Nazi has improved undeniably. The
Speaker 1: Savior of India passes off as he passes off as
Speaker 1: a Hindu extremist. VD Savarkar's primary motivation was a desire
Speaker 1: to see India turned into a Hindu stand that the
Speaker 1: term here at the time, a nation completely dominated by
Speaker 1: Hinduism and Muslims in particular, completely purged and exercise from society.
Speaker 1: At that same gathering, he stated, if we Hindus an
Speaker 1: India grow stronger in time, these Muslim friends of the
Speaker 1: league type will have to play the part of the
Speaker 1: German Jews instead. Yeah. Yeah, not a nice guy and
Speaker 1: Vid Savarkar coined the term Hindutva for his new ideology.
Speaker 1: He argued that ancient Arians who had settled in India
Speaker 1: formed a Hindu nation. Hindu nous stemmed from geographical unity,
Speaker 1: racial unity and a common culture which pitted the Hindus
Speaker 1: of India against all others. And there was like a
Speaker 1: cast angle to it too. He was like a Brahmin
Speaker 1: and I think in his view of it, and it's
Speaker 1: become sort of more egalitarian. Fascism in the modern era
Speaker 1: but like initially there was like a very strict like
Speaker 1: racial hierarchy within Hinduism too. I think that's less of
Speaker 1: a factor now, but I'm not an expert on it um.
Speaker 1: Another early RSS leader, Ms. Goldwal Car, was nicknamed the
Speaker 1: Guru of Hate. He was another big Hitler fan. In
Speaker 1: his nineteen thirty nine book We Are Nationhood, defined a
Speaker 1: seminal RSS text, he wrote this, something amazing about being
Speaker 1: the Guru of Hate. It's like it's like any pepitone's
Speaker 1: the bit or Buddha, you know. I mean, not suggesting
Speaker 1: he's a Nazi. He's a very funny non Nazi comedian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a Nazi, just repeating. Probably not a Nazi. Probably,
Speaker 1: so he said this in his book German Race pride
Speaker 1: has now become topic of the day to keep up
Speaker 1: the purity of the race and its culture. Germany shocked
Speaker 1: the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races,
Speaker 1: the Jews. A good lesson for us in hindu stand
Speaker 1: to learn and profit by. So it's so cool that
Speaker 1: when my grandpa's, i mean my grandma's family was all
Speaker 1: shot to death, it was like a really good lesson
Speaker 1: for it was a really good lesson it. It goes
Speaker 1: to show kind of this thing that I don't think
Speaker 1: it's talked about enough, which is like fascism functions very
Speaker 1: similarly to a cancer and World War two can be
Speaker 1: seen as a really aggressive dose of chemo. But we
Speaker 1: didn't fucking get at all. And that's why this is
Speaker 1: all happening all over the world right now. Is these
Speaker 1: little bitty like pockets of it. It's not possible to
Speaker 1: get at all. I maybe it is. Maybe I think
Speaker 1: there's an argument to be made about the nature of
Speaker 1: our society and that and this will come into play
Speaker 1: later here, and that if you live in a system
Speaker 1: that is is completely dominated by by capitalism and moneyed
Speaker 1: interests as ours is, because that's always a factor in
Speaker 1: the rise of all these movements, is the business leaders
Speaker 1: in those countries, even the ones that don't really like
Speaker 1: the Fascist party, prefer it to socialism. And that's a
Speaker 1: huge factor everywhere fascism seriously takes hold. It's just like
Speaker 1: these rich people being like, well, I guess I prefer
Speaker 1: these folks to giving up a big chunk on my fortune.
Speaker 1: And so there's an argument to be made that if
Speaker 1: you have a state with a strong social safety net
Speaker 1: already in place, and with strict limits on how much
Speaker 1: power the wealthy can exercise, it's seriously cramps the ability
Speaker 1: of these movements to get off the ground. Um, nobody's
Speaker 1: ever eradicated fascism from the human race, So we can't
Speaker 1: know what the solution is. But if i'm if I'm theorizing,
Speaker 1: that would be a suggestion I would make, I'll take
Speaker 1: it under advisement. Yeah, the next time you're trying to
Speaker 1: eliminate fascism, maybe give that a shot. Not all the
Speaker 1: way in, but I'll think about it. Well, it's all
Speaker 1: on you specifically, so I hope you do. But yeah,
Speaker 1: as you know, people have been waiting for me to
Speaker 1: eliminate FACI. Yeah, we're all waiting. So. Another one of
Speaker 1: the founders of the RSS was a guy named hedge War,
Speaker 1: and he deliberately patterned the RSS after the fascist parties
Speaker 1: he'd watched rise to power in Germany and Italy. Hedgewar
Speaker 1: addressed his stormtroopers and khaki uniforms patterned off Mussolini's fascists.
Speaker 1: He marched them through the street and an Indian equivalent
Speaker 1: to the goose step, and he gave them like a
Speaker 1: weird little salute that's like kind of like a modified
Speaker 1: Hitler salute that they still do to this day, modified
Speaker 1: in which way. Um, if you look up r SS,
Speaker 1: well it's like a little bit less of the hand motion. Um,
Speaker 1: just like less noticeable. What do you want me to
Speaker 1: look at r SS salute? Yeah? Yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: like your arm kind of like over your with like
Speaker 1: your fist over your heart. You can sort of see
Speaker 1: the inspiration, but it kind of looks if you do this,
Speaker 1: it's like almost Hitler. Yeah, it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a of a subdued Do you have to keep your
Speaker 1: arms straight though? Yeah? I think you have to keep
Speaker 1: it draka. You know that has a very Hitler look.
Speaker 1: It's got a hitlery look to it. Yeah. And Hedgewar's
Speaker 1: fundamental belief was that centuries of domination by the British
Speaker 1: Empire had emasculated the Indian man and they needed a violent,
Speaker 1: fascist paramilitary force to restore their manly pride. So I
Speaker 1: noticed you picked up the knife just sort of by reflex.
Speaker 1: That's a good reflex to fascism. Um. So the RSS
Speaker 1: was from the beginning profoundly anti Muslim. They preached that
Speaker 1: India's Muslims were descended from Hindus who had been violently converted,
Speaker 1: and thus we're not authentically Indian. Non violence and plurality
Speaker 1: were all equally hateful to the men of the RSS,
Speaker 1: including one Naam van Ayak Gudzi, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
Speaker 1: After Gandhi's murder, the party was banned, but not for long.
Speaker 1: The centrist powers of Indian never quite succeeded in wiping
Speaker 1: it out, and as a result, it hung out in
Speaker 1: the margins of political society for years, waiting for the
Speaker 1: right time to re emerge. Bit by bit, it grew
Speaker 1: to hold influence over ever greater swaths of Indian society.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, the Gujarat State Bore issued
Speaker 1: textbooks that described Adolf Hitler as a hero, with social
Speaker 1: study textbook chapter titles like Hitler, the Supremo and Internal
Speaker 1: Achievements of Nazism One Secure Supremo. What a bad breakfast sandwich? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that does sound like a terrible It's like a lot
Speaker 1: of hair and it just mustaches. Yeah, it's mostly like
Speaker 1: really greasy pork and like boiled eggs. Yeah, greasy pork
Speaker 1: and boiled eggs. Is the supremo Hitler. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: mustaches and let us. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I'd
Speaker 1: prefer it to subway, but not by much. And it's
Speaker 1: less fascist than subway, but not by much. Subway. If
Speaker 1: you sponsor our show, I'll take all this back and
Speaker 1: we will eat fresh seriously. So yeah. From that social
Speaker 1: study textbook, there's a section called Ideology of Nazism, and
Speaker 1: in that chapter it notes quote Hitler lit dignity and
Speaker 1: prestige to the German government. He adopted the polity of
Speaker 1: opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of
Speaker 1: the German race. So you can kind to see something
Speaker 1: happening here. Yeah. Sympathizers in the state of Tamil Nadu
Speaker 1: succeeded in sliding pro Nazi messages into a tenth grade
Speaker 1: social studies textbook in two thousand eleven, including chapters praising
Speaker 1: Hitler's inspiring leadership achievements and how the Nazis only ordered
Speaker 1: the persecution of the Jews in order to maintain a
Speaker 1: German race with Nordic elements. Nordic elements, so that's good.
Speaker 1: In two twelve tenth grade students at a private school
Speaker 1: in Mumbai were asked to complete a sentence starting with
Speaker 1: the words I admire. Nine of the students in that
Speaker 1: class picked Hitler. A two two pole conducted by the
Speaker 1: Times of India found that seventeen percent of respondents listed
Speaker 1: Hitler as the kind of leader India ought to have. So,
Speaker 1: given all that, it would be fair to say that
Speaker 1: India's issues with Nazism go just a scouche behind simple
Speaker 1: ignorance of history. It would, in fact be fair to
Speaker 1: say that a number of very motivated people have spent
Speaker 1: decades attempting to mainstream Nazi idology and pushed the ideals
Speaker 1: of fascism on the people of the world's largest democracy.
Speaker 1: And it would furthermore be fair to say that those
Speaker 1: same very motivated people have seen terrifying success. No individual
Speaker 1: has seen more success with this than Narindra Moody, the
Speaker 1: current Prime Minister of India and the man who was
Speaker 1: governor of Gurot in two thousand four when the province
Speaker 1: added that pro Hitler curriculum to X textbooks. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Moody now. Now now we're into the past. NiFe,
Speaker 1: good that's the right response. Oh look, he let me
Speaker 1: call it my knife. What's up now, my knife? I'm
Speaker 1: kindly stroking my knife. Is the coolest ever all day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's get a couple of knives. More knives in here.
Speaker 1: Sophie Narendra Modi was born in Vanegar, a small town
Speaker 1: in North guj rots Mansana district, on September seventeenth, nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: He was the sixth of the third of six children,
Speaker 1: and he was not born into wealcare privilege. His family
Speaker 1: was of the Ganchi cast, which put them about as
Speaker 1: low on the cultural totem pole as one could go
Speaker 1: without literally being an outcast. Traditionally, members of this cast
Speaker 1: pressed vegetable oil for a living, but Narindra's father supported
Speaker 1: his family by running a small chi shop at a
Speaker 1: local railway station. The Moody family were incredibly poor and
Speaker 1: lived together in a forty by twelve foot single story house.
Speaker 1: When Narindraw was old enough, he worked at his father's
Speaker 1: tea shop to help support the family. He would get
Speaker 1: up early to work alongside his dad and then cross
Speaker 1: the train tracks to head to school later in the morning.
Speaker 1: The modern political propaganda around Moody often emphasizes the fact
Speaker 1: that he is unmarried and chased, essentially portraying him as
Speaker 1: something of a monk dedicated purely to his work on
Speaker 1: behalf of India, a man who sacrificed even love for
Speaker 1: the love of his country. As we know, being chased
Speaker 1: doesn't always work up. Actually, it can be a real problem.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people. Yeah, people should just suck maybe um.
Speaker 1: But this whole like presenting himself as like a chased monk,
Speaker 1: it does kind of keeps with a broad trended propaganda
Speaker 1: around mode. For example, this is how his website Narindra
Speaker 1: Moody dot Ian describes his childhood. As a child, Narindra
Speaker 1: Moody balance to studies, non academic life and his contribution
Speaker 1: to the family tea stall. His schoolmates were calling a
Speaker 1: Reindra as a diligent student with a penchant for debating
Speaker 1: and reading. He would spend hours and hours reading in
Speaker 1: the school library. Among the sports, he was very fond
Speaker 1: of swimming. Nourindramodi had a wide range of friends from
Speaker 1: all the communities. As a child, he often celebrated both
Speaker 1: Hindu and Muslim festivals. Considering the large number of Muslim
Speaker 1: friends he had in the neighborhood. Yet his thoughts and
Speaker 1: his dreams went way beyond a conventional life that began
Speaker 1: in the classroom and ended in the environs of an office.
Speaker 1: He wanted to go out there and make a difference
Speaker 1: to society, to wipe tears and suffering among people. At
Speaker 1: a young age, he developed an inclination towards renunciation and asceticism.
Speaker 1: He gave up eating salt, chili's oil, and jaggery. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of how he's portrayed in his official propaganda, right,
Speaker 1: So they also he hit tons of Hindu or Muslim friends.
Speaker 1: He's not racist, and so dude, if your God doesn't
Speaker 1: want you to eat chili's, abandon your God. It's not
Speaker 1: that because like obviously chilies are like a traditional Hindu food.
Speaker 1: It's this idea that like, um, that they are better
Speaker 1: than people because you don't need chilies, that because you
Speaker 1: sacrifice comforts of the flesh, you're a holy man. Like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what make and that's not just Hinduism.
Speaker 1: That's like a huge and Christianity and Islam. Like this
Speaker 1: idea of what I'm saying, if you're not fucking at
Speaker 1: least have chilies. If you're not fucking at least have chilies.
Speaker 1: You don't have hot sauce. What do you even have
Speaker 1: that's a T shirt? You're not fucking you have some chilies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta anyway chilies or fucking ideally both to avoid fascism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so. It was, however, revealed during his first campaign
Speaker 1: for Prime minister that Narendra was legally married and had
Speaker 1: been virtually his entire life. Uh, he was like married
Speaker 1: as a child. The couple actually moved in together at
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen, but the only cohabited for three months.
Speaker 1: The Narendra abandoned his wife to wander around him Alayan
Speaker 1: mountains on a pilgrimage and he never returned to death
Speaker 1: draws part just kidding, No, until I wander away forever.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little bit weirder than that because I
Speaker 1: can't put this on Narendra because he didn't get to
Speaker 1: choose to marry his wife. It was like, um his
Speaker 1: family because his family was very traditional UM and they
Speaker 1: thought that like they should um do kind of the
Speaker 1: traditional thing for people in their culture, which was like
Speaker 1: you marry off the kid pretty young. Like it was
Speaker 1: an arranged marriage sort of thing, and so like this
Speaker 1: partner was picked for him when he was three or
Speaker 1: four and they were just like engaged to be married.
Speaker 1: And then at seventeen, they moved in together and he
Speaker 1: kind of immediately knew, like, I don't want this life,
Speaker 1: and so he left. And I can't really put I mean,
Speaker 1: I can put the whole becoming like a fascist on him,
Speaker 1: but deciding that you don't want to marry this person
Speaker 1: your parents hooked you up with when you were like four,
Speaker 1: that that can't be on him. How did his wife
Speaker 1: feel though? I don't know. Yeah, but that's I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't blame him for like not wanting to be
Speaker 1: married when he didn't choose to get married. I'm sure
Speaker 1: she didn't want it either, but she was just trying
Speaker 1: to play along for a second. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what happened to her. I don't know that anybody does. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: we should research that. That would be X time to know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, what I'm getting out is that, like, this
Speaker 1: guy's backstory is a little bit complicated, and we don't
Speaker 1: have like a really clear idea of how he spent
Speaker 1: his youth or his childhood. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: propaganda in a few bits of like hard facts that
Speaker 1: are sprinkled in here and there. Um yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it's weird, um or not weird. It's just it's not
Speaker 1: what we're used to. And it's hard to like, like
Speaker 1: a lot of this is hard to kind of square
Speaker 1: with the way things are in the US. Like here
Speaker 1: in the US, like politicians are supposed to be like
Speaker 1: family men and like to the point where like our
Speaker 1: current president literally bragged about his dick size during a
Speaker 1: major political debate. And it's kind of hard as an
Speaker 1: American to get your head around somebody bragging that, like
Speaker 1: I don't fuck, I have no partner, and like I
Speaker 1: don't bone at all. But no, I get that it
Speaker 1: makes you folier than other people exactly. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: it kind of positions to come, yeah, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't for me coming as politics and that's it's just different. Um. So.
Speaker 1: Nourendra's childhood coincided with an interesting time in Indian politics.
Speaker 1: The Congress Party, the party of Gandhi, basically held power
Speaker 1: for the first fifty years of his life. They stood
Speaker 1: for a sec for secular democratic values and were directly
Speaker 1: opposed to the R s S. As you might expect
Speaker 1: from a violent fascist movement, The R excess was initially
Speaker 1: RSS was initially a high cast endeavor organized by wealthy men,
Speaker 1: but in order to expand their membership base after the
Speaker 1: partition of India, the RSS quickly found itself recruiting new
Speaker 1: members of lower casts, and one of those recruits was
Speaker 1: a young boy named Narendra Modi. It's hard to say
Speaker 1: when he first got involved with the R S S.
Speaker 1: I've heard some sources that claim he was eight or
Speaker 1: nine years old when they when they went with him.
Speaker 1: That's real fucking early. Yeah. His official biographies don't agree
Speaker 1: with this, and they state that he was like after
Speaker 1: he went on pilgrimage to the Himalayas, that he came
Speaker 1: back and he joined the RSS. We don't know, um.
Speaker 1: The official biographies talk about I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like we when he was nine years old, there
Speaker 1: was flooding in a river and he built a food
Speaker 1: stall to donate the proceeds to relief work um. And
Speaker 1: that during a war with Pakistan and his youth he
Speaker 1: engaged in acts of charity, serving tea to soldiers passing
Speaker 1: through the railway station. That's what they focused on the
Speaker 1: official biography, that he's like this very patriotic kid who
Speaker 1: dedicates a lot of his time and effort to helping
Speaker 1: his fellow hindus um. And it's entirely possible that if
Speaker 1: he did any of this stuff, it was actually at
Speaker 1: the behest of the RSS, and he was doing it
Speaker 1: as like a child activist. I really don't know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of impossible to tell whatever the precise truth. We
Speaker 1: know that at age seventeen, Narindra abandoned his wife and
Speaker 1: left on a pilgrimage of spiritual enlightenment. When he came back,
Speaker 1: he set up a tea card at a bus stand
Speaker 1: to make ends meet and began working for the RSS
Speaker 1: in a in an official capacity as a procharek, which
Speaker 1: was essentially a street propagandist. So the holler at his
Speaker 1: wife when he got back, I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't think they saw each other again. He has come
Speaker 1: by and say like, hey, it's gonna be weird. I'm
Speaker 1: selling tea in town. I'm back. You know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a dick, but probably you don't want
Speaker 1: to be with me anyway. So this is for the best.
Speaker 1: But if you see me in town slinging t to
Speaker 1: the Nazis, don't don't feel weird about it. Don't make
Speaker 1: it weird. I have to say, I've never fucked, so
Speaker 1: this is critical for me. So it may not have
Speaker 1: he he might be completely honest about the whole chasteness thing.
Speaker 1: Like well, it's kind of hard to tell because it's
Speaker 1: hard to get like a real hint of what the
Speaker 1: man is. But he might actually be like a no
Speaker 1: nuts sort of dude, like like really committed to that
Speaker 1: proud boy don't come sort of sort of thing fascist
Speaker 1: hate coming. I know it's so so um. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: starts work as a protarch, which is basically like a
Speaker 1: street propagandist, like he's giving speeches and stuff to try
Speaker 1: to like rile people up and get them involved in
Speaker 1: this nationalist movement and really teaches him how to like
Speaker 1: stir up a crowd and work one Um and Paris
Speaker 1: Moody were expected to remain chased, living like monks and
Speaker 1: dedicating their every waking hour to the party. So when
Speaker 1: Moody was not delivering speeches and spreading the RSS gospel
Speaker 1: of intolerance against non Hindu's he cleaned out the living
Speaker 1: quarters of senior RSS officials. In interviews today, Moody claims
Speaker 1: that finding the RSS basically saved his life. Quote, I
Speaker 1: got the inspiration to live for the nation from the RSS.
Speaker 1: I learned to live for others and not for myself.
Speaker 1: I owe it all to the r s S. So
Speaker 1: fascist parties like the RSS de facto idolized the military,
Speaker 1: and leaders in such organizations either have to have a
Speaker 1: military background of their own or like as we saw
Speaker 1: with people like Hitler and Mussolini, or they need to
Speaker 1: come up with a very good excuse as to why
Speaker 1: they did not serve that still reinforces their bona fides
Speaker 1: as like a lover of the military. I was busy,
Speaker 1: not fucking. I was busy to not to the military.
Speaker 1: You got the military. Um. We kind of see this
Speaker 1: with Trump's bones spurs and in his bizarre insistence that
Speaker 1: the time he spent in the military school was essentially
Speaker 1: the same as being in the military. You've got to
Speaker 1: find a way to like kind of connect yourself to
Speaker 1: the military if you're going to be this sort of
Speaker 1: authoritarian strong man. And Moody never served, but his biography
Speaker 1: really tries to thread that needle, and I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from it right now. As a child, Narendra Moody had
Speaker 1: one dream to serve in the Indian Army. For many
Speaker 1: youngsters of his time, the army was seen as the
Speaker 1: ultimate means of serving Mother India. As luck would have it,
Speaker 1: his family was dead opposed to the idea. Nourindra Moody
Speaker 1: was very keen to study in Sinic School located a
Speaker 1: near by jem Nagar, but when the time came to
Speaker 1: pay the feest, there was no money at home. Surely,
Speaker 1: Narindra was disappointed, But fate had different plans for this
Speaker 1: young boy who was disappointed on not being able to
Speaker 1: wear the uniform of a Jawana soldier. Over the years,
Speaker 1: he embarked on a unique path that took him across
Speaker 1: India in pursuit of the larger mission to serve humanity.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to be a soldier, but like, they
Speaker 1: couldn't make the funding workout and stuff, and thankfully he
Speaker 1: found another way to serve. That's just like being a soldier,
Speaker 1: but doesn't risk him getting shot in a border war
Speaker 1: with Pakistan. So that's cool. So just like though, just
Speaker 1: like that it's the same. It's the same, only he
Speaker 1: doesn't die anonymously in a trench being ordered to charge
Speaker 1: a machine Gunness, that is very same. It is the same,
Speaker 1: exactly the same, but very fortunate for him. So in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, when Moody was twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: India went through a period of economic collapse in the
Speaker 1: attendant civil and rest that comes with it. The RSS
Speaker 1: saw this as an opportunity to recruit and to stir
Speaker 1: up dissent against the ruling Congress Party. Prime Minister in
Speaker 1: Dera Gandhi responded to all this by suspending parliament and
Speaker 1: instituting emergency rule, a widely unpopular and a legal move
Speaker 1: that was rightly condemned by many. During her time as
Speaker 1: de facto dictator, Indira Gandhi had RSS leaders arrested and persecuted,
Speaker 1: and the organization itself was banned. Moody went into hiding
Speaker 1: at this time, dressing as a seek in a turban
Speaker 1: and what appears to be a fake beard. I've got
Speaker 1: a picture of him in disguise, and I'm almost certain
Speaker 1: that that's a costume piece he's wearing. Let me see
Speaker 1: the beard. Look at that it's a little line on
Speaker 1: there that makes it look like it's a fake wed
Speaker 1: or he's just like got like a thick version of
Speaker 1: a chin strap. Going. Yeah, I can't really say for
Speaker 1: certain if it is a fake beard or not, but
Speaker 1: it's the only question that it's a wild choice either way.
Speaker 1: I think the mustaches, you can see the tape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird. It's a weird look. Sunglasses help, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: do help. I mean it's not a bad he just
Speaker 1: couldn't grow a beard or he has one now I
Speaker 1: think so, like what the dude, I mean, he was
Speaker 1: younger then some minute, takes a while before it comes time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll accept that. So. Indira Gandhi's period of emergency rule
Speaker 1: eventually ended and the RSS was unbanned, and rather than
Speaker 1: being harmed by their period of persecution, Gandhi's targeting of
Speaker 1: the group legitimized in the eyes of many Indians who
Speaker 1: had not identified with the organization previously. The RSS began
Speaker 1: to grow and the loyal and Narindric Moody moved up
Speaker 1: the ranks quickly. In nine seven, he joined the Janata
Speaker 1: Party or b j P, and the b j P
Speaker 1: is the electorally political also a member of the b
Speaker 1: j P. What's up, dude. That is sorry, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's the In this case, the b j P is
Speaker 1: the electorally political wing of the RSS. You don't got
Speaker 1: to tell me about the b j Robert's uncomfortable. It's great,
Speaker 1: you can all join blushed the JP. That is so cute.
Speaker 1: Lord in Heaven, you're adorable. You know what else is
Speaker 1: adorable and pro blow job. That's that's exactly right. All
Speaker 1: of these companies will blow you in the capitalistic sense
Speaker 1: by sending you products in exchange for currency. We're back.
Speaker 1: So uh. Moody has just joined the b j P UM,
Speaker 1: which is the political wing of the RSS. And he
Speaker 1: started at the bottom of the party, but his skill
Speaker 1: as an organizer ensured that he rose rapidly. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, he had become a senior figure in the
Speaker 1: b JPS Gugati chapter. At the time, the b j
Speaker 1: P was still definitely fringe. It had only two seats
Speaker 1: in parliament. The party leadership looked out at the political
Speaker 1: situation in India and saw that they needed a cause
Speaker 1: to crystallize the divisions between Hindu and Muslim in the country,
Speaker 1: and they found this cause in the city of Iodia.
Speaker 1: That holy city had a mosque called the Babri Mashid
Speaker 1: mas Jid sorry the Babri Musjid, which had been built
Speaker 1: by the Muslim Mughal and bur Baber in fifty eight
Speaker 1: for a variety of confusing reasons. A number of local
Speaker 1: Hindus had grown convinced over the years that this mosque
Speaker 1: was built over the site of an old Hindu temple,
Speaker 1: and some of these people began to claim that ram
Speaker 1: and Avatara Vishnu had been born on the spot. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote now from a New Yorker article
Speaker 1: laying out what happened next. In September nine, senior b
Speaker 1: JP member named L. K. Advani began calling for the
Speaker 1: Babri Musjid to be destroyed and for a Hindu temple
Speaker 1: to take its place. To build support for the idea,
Speaker 1: he undertook a two month pilgrimage called the ram rath
Speaker 1: Yatra across the Indian heartland. Traveling aboard a Nissan jiep
Speaker 1: refitted to look like a chariot, he sometimes gave several
Speaker 1: speeches a day in flaming crowds about what he saw
Speaker 1: as the government's favoritism towards Muslims. Sectarian riots followed in
Speaker 1: his wake, leaving hundreds dead. At Vani was arrested before
Speaker 1: he reached Iodia, but other b JP members carried on
Speaker 1: gathering supporters and donations along the way. On December six,
Speaker 1: a crowd led by RSS partisans swarmed the bobbary ms
Speaker 1: Jed and using axes and hammers, began tearing the building down.
Speaker 1: By nightfall it had been completely raised. So they destroyed
Speaker 1: this mosque and uh Narindra Modi was still pretty low
Speaker 1: on the totem pole at this point, but his skill
Speaker 1: as an organizer earned him a place organizing the rath
Speaker 1: Yatra that like Chariot march across the country. It was
Speaker 1: his job to organize the Gujrat section of the Chariot March,
Speaker 1: and the ram Yatha sparked a series of horrifically bloody
Speaker 1: Hindew Muslim riots all across the subcontinent. The violence took
Speaker 1: weeks to die down, and it was particularly bad in Mumbai,
Speaker 1: one of India's largest cities. Muslims were forced either by
Speaker 1: mobs or by basic self preservation to move out of neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Their families had occupied for generations. Many moved into what
Speaker 1: we're effectively ghettos. The riots and dislow casion caused by
Speaker 1: the ram Rath Theatra's aftershocks contributed to the growing violent
Speaker 1: polarization of Indian society. One survivor the New Yorker interviewed
Speaker 1: reported feeling as if Mumbai had been transformed by all this.
Speaker 1: That is the first time I ever really thought about
Speaker 1: my identity, our entire neighborhood, our friends were going to
Speaker 1: kill us, and all this was fucking bank for the RSS.
Speaker 1: By nine years after Moodi joined, the b j P
Speaker 1: had grown to become the single largest party in Parliament.
Speaker 1: As it ever does, the rioting and racial hatred sparked
Speaker 1: by this fascist organization convinced more people to join it.
Speaker 1: As they grew to consume the Indian political system, a
Speaker 1: few forward thinking academics began to study the party and
Speaker 1: its members. One of these was Ashish Nandi, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote again from The New Yorker here, a trained psychologist,
Speaker 1: he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists.
Speaker 1: One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was
Speaker 1: then a little known b JP functionary Nandi interviewed Modi
Speaker 1: for several hours and came away shaken. His subject, Nandi
Speaker 1: told me, exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality, puritanical, rigid,
Speaker 1: a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and
Speaker 1: an enormous ego that protected annawing and security. During an interview,
Speaker 1: Moody elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the
Speaker 1: target of a global conspiracy in which every Muslim in
Speaker 1: the country was likely complicit. Moody was a fascist in
Speaker 1: every sense. Nandy said, I don't mean this as a
Speaker 1: term of abuse. It's a diagnostic category. Cool and good
Speaker 1: the only diagnostics that I'm sorry, it's just just going
Speaker 1: to come back to the b j P. Sometimes all
Speaker 1: you can do is laugh about blow jobs when you're
Speaker 1: talking about fascism, because they hate blow jobs. It's a
Speaker 1: diagnostic category, That's what she said. Yeah, that's what That's
Speaker 1: what this psychologist come not just being like you're a fascion.
Speaker 1: I'm being like, fascism is a mental disorder when I
Speaker 1: am diagnosing you with it. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So in
Speaker 1: September two thousand one, a month in which nothing else
Speaker 1: of historical import occurred. Nurindra Moody was appointed to be
Speaker 1: the Chief Minister of the government of Gujerat, which the
Speaker 1: rs S and b JP had begun to dominate in
Speaker 1: a series of elections. Moody's rise to power was not
Speaker 1: due to his own electoral success though um. It was
Speaker 1: due to basically his ability to politic internally, and he
Speaker 1: basically undermined another rival of his and the v j P,
Speaker 1: a guy named Keshubai Patel. I am so sorry about
Speaker 1: the names here. You know me, yes, yes, yes, uh
Speaker 1: so yeah. I found a quote from a guy named
Speaker 1: Vinod Meta, which is the former editor of an Indian
Speaker 1: news magazine called Outlook, who remembers Mody turning up at
Speaker 1: their office in the year two thousand with a bunch
Speaker 1: of documents incriminating this rival of his Patel and a
Speaker 1: scandal quote. I immediately felt this man was bad news.
Speaker 1: There was something sinister about him and the way he spoke,
Speaker 1: and I felt deeply uncomfortable in his presence. He complained
Speaker 1: about Patel and talked about corruption. He came back a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but I didn't run the story before
Speaker 1: I knew what had happened. He was back at Gujrat
Speaker 1: as the chief minister in Keshubai's place. So Narendra like
Speaker 1: basically Fox with this other guy he sees his arrival,
Speaker 1: succeeds in kind of maneuvering him out of power, and
Speaker 1: he winds up as the man in charge on gat
Speaker 1: On February two, when a passenger train stops in the
Speaker 1: city of go Drop after departing from Iodia, many of
Speaker 1: the people on board the train were Hindu pilgrims who
Speaker 1: had been visiting the destroyed Bobary Maschi and mosque in
Speaker 1: order to advocate the building of a Hindu temple over
Speaker 1: its remains. Most of them were members of the RSS. Somehow,
Speaker 1: Muslim residents of Gojra realized that this train was filled
Speaker 1: with RSS activists and they began to shout and jeer
Speaker 1: at them, and the Hindu partisans inside began to shout back.
Speaker 1: The train stalled as it began to depart, and this
Speaker 1: provided time for the confrontation to escalate. No one knows
Speaker 1: exactly what happened next, but someone threw something on fire
Speaker 1: into one of the cars, possibly like a Muslim shop
Speaker 1: owner like Tasta stove in there. It's really not known
Speaker 1: for certain, but one of the people in the crowd
Speaker 1: outside saw something on fire into the into the train,
Speaker 1: and I I've been on a lot of Indian trains.
Speaker 1: They're they're incredibly crowded, and a lot of people wearing
Speaker 1: like long flowing cotton garments and also carrying like piles
Speaker 1: of like clothes and stuff with them, like what they
Speaker 1: own and whatnot. And it's incredibly flammable in there, and
Speaker 1: this catches, like members of the group inside catch and
Speaker 1: the fire spreads, and it's just this this horrific fire,
Speaker 1: and really like before anyone knows what's happening, fifty eight
Speaker 1: people had either burned to death or suffocated on board
Speaker 1: the train. Yeah, and blame quickly settles on Muslims in
Speaker 1: general for this horrible tragedy. So members of the VHP,
Speaker 1: the religious wing of the RSS, the group that most
Speaker 1: of the people in the train had been a part of,
Speaker 1: petition Narendra Modi for the right to parade the burnt
Speaker 1: corpses of their members through the streets of the Metabot,
Speaker 1: the largest city in Guat. What. Yeah, They're like, we wanna,
Speaker 1: we wanna really like make the most of this tragedy.
Speaker 1: So we want to carry the dead bodies of our
Speaker 1: members who got burnt to death and marched them through
Speaker 1: the city to try to like spark a fucking riot,
Speaker 1: Like that's the goal here. Excuse me, I gotta say that,
Speaker 1: you know. I was like, Oh, I'm with them, I'm
Speaker 1: with them, They're reaving. Wait what Yeah, so I feel
Speaker 1: like that really went quick. Yeah. Um. And the Home
Speaker 1: Secretary of Guzerat warns Moody that allowing them to do
Speaker 1: this will spark another violent riot, telling him things will
Speaker 1: go out of hand. But out of hand is exactly
Speaker 1: where Moody wanted things to go, and sure enough, he
Speaker 1: allows them to march the corpses of their dead members
Speaker 1: through the street, and this provokes mobs of furious Hindus
Speaker 1: to take to the streets all throughout the cities of Gurot,
Speaker 1: shouting take revenge and slaughter the Muslims. Rioters cut open
Speaker 1: the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women and murdered babies. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of women were gang y. Yeah, this is where we
Speaker 1: get where that paragraph all right, Yeah, okay, touche, you
Speaker 1: son of a bit. There's mask gang rapes at least
Speaker 1: one Muslim boy is forced to drink kerosene and swallow
Speaker 1: a lit match. It's it's bad. It's a bad set
Speaker 1: of riots. Can you swallow a lit match? I'm no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I know that's not the part I should
Speaker 1: focus on. It's not I don't think well, yeah, um
Speaker 1: And also a member of the Congress Party as San Joffrey,
Speaker 1: was caught by a crowd and publicly dismembered. So like,
Speaker 1: these are really bad rights. By the time it's all over,
Speaker 1: somewhere around two to three thousand people are dead, and
Speaker 1: the vast majority of them are Muslims, and it will
Speaker 1: will never get an exact death toll. Um. Reports began
Speaker 1: to filter out in the immediate wake that this violence
Speaker 1: had not been purely spontaneous, just an uncontrollable expression of rage.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from the New Yorker again, they
Speaker 1: appeared to have been largely planned and directed by the RSS.
Speaker 1: Teams of men armed with clubs, guns, and swords fanned
Speaker 1: out across the States Muslim enclaves, often carrying voter rolls
Speaker 1: and other official documents that led them to Muslims homes
Speaker 1: and shops so they get like government information on where
Speaker 1: Muslims are living in town. To carry out this stuff
Speaker 1: sounds very crystal Nocti. Yeah, Modi, the man in charge
Speaker 1: of the Guadi government was nowhere to be found, but
Speaker 1: his influence was felt everywhere as he ordered Indian Army
Speaker 1: soldiers to post up in their barracks rather than intervened
Speaker 1: to stop the violence. Police also received orders to stand down,
Speaker 1: and in many areous they just took part in the killing.
Speaker 1: One of the very few officers who did not go
Speaker 1: along with this was Rahul Sharma, the top cop and
Speaker 1: the heavily Muslim district of bob Nagar. He later testified
Speaker 1: that he received no word at all from his superiors
Speaker 1: on how to contain the riots, with which lasted more
Speaker 1: than three months. Sharma took matters into the riots lasted
Speaker 1: for more than three months. Yea three months of constant
Speaker 1: street violence. Holy ship. Yeah, it's hardcore. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: bad time um. And Sharma is one of like the
Speaker 1: few heroes of this time. So he like is being
Speaker 1: told nothing at all from his superiors, like what to
Speaker 1: do about these murder mobs? Um. And it kind of
Speaker 1: comes to a head when there's huge organized crowd of
Speaker 1: rss supporters with weapons start like posting up outside a
Speaker 1: school filled with four hundred Muslim children. Um, and he
Speaker 1: eventually orders his cops to like fire into the crowd,
Speaker 1: which is really maybe the only time I can think
Speaker 1: of where I'm like, yeah, it's good that the police
Speaker 1: shot at that crowd. Holy shit. But he successfully saves
Speaker 1: all these kids. He's a good guy. He did the
Speaker 1: right thing. Um, most police did not. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of Guadi police let the programs continue unabated. As a
Speaker 1: general rule, this too conforms to the standard behavior of
Speaker 1: law enforcement during acts of ethnic cleansing all around the world.
Speaker 1: The ones who do not actively participate very often sit
Speaker 1: back and watch. So we can assume anywhere there is
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing occurring, the police will be a part of
Speaker 1: it actively rather than protecting the victims. That's just true.
Speaker 1: Multiple content for aligning. What's the opposite of a silver lining,
Speaker 1: like a ship streak? Yeah, it's like a ship streak.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, yeah yeah, like a ship streak covering
Speaker 1: one of those like thin blue lines. Yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: Sharma was shuffled out of his job and criticized by
Speaker 1: India's Home Minister. A b JP functionary named Advani for
Speaker 1: allowing too many Hindus to die in his district. So
Speaker 1: like one of the few cops who like does what
Speaker 1: you would hope a police officer due and protects the
Speaker 1: public gets like basically fired for the fact that too
Speaker 1: many Hindus died because like some of his cops had
Speaker 1: to like shoot at Hindus to like stop them from
Speaker 1: massacring all these school children. So in the end, two
Speaker 1: thousand people are more were killed in three months of
Speaker 1: horrific violence. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people,
Speaker 1: mostly Muslims, were forced out of their homes. As with
Speaker 1: the earlier rioting in September nineteen ninety, the Guzati riots
Speaker 1: left a vastly more polarized state in their wake. Muslims
Speaker 1: were forced out of neighborhoods they'd long inhabited and dumped
Speaker 1: into slums for their own safety. One of these formed
Speaker 1: in the vast garbage dump of the city of Amitabad.
Speaker 1: Citizens Village, as it came to be known, hosted tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of Muslim refugees. What little aid it received
Speaker 1: was supplied by volunteers. Narendra Modi's government refused to help
Speaker 1: when he was asked why he had abandoned these people,
Speaker 1: who were also citizens of Guzat. Moody replied, relief camps
Speaker 1: are actually child making factories. Those who keep on multiplying
Speaker 1: the population should be taught a lesson. Wow, he's a
Speaker 1: cool guy. Cool not coming, dude. The guzat Yots were
Speaker 1: met with a tepid response by the Indian government. Only
Speaker 1: a few dozen rioters were ever convicted of anything, and
Speaker 1: only one elected official in the b j P, Maya
Speaker 1: ben Kodnani, was ever convicted of murder and conspiracy. She
Speaker 1: was cleared of all charges when Moody became the Prime minister.
Speaker 1: So that's nice, Pretty convenient, Pretty convenient. I'm getting ahead
Speaker 1: of myself a little bit. Though the international community was
Speaker 1: outraged by what happened in Gurod and the RSS and Nearindra.
Speaker 1: Moody in particular became global pariahs. Moody was banned from
Speaker 1: travel to the United States or the United Kingdom. His
Speaker 1: reputation suffered enough that his fellow b JP members in
Speaker 1: India temporarily disavowed him. In two thousand four, the b
Speaker 1: JP Prime Minister at all was voted out of office
Speaker 1: and he blamed Nearindra Moody for his loss. So for
Speaker 1: a while it seemed like the guse Roight riots, as
Speaker 1: horrible as they were, had sounded a death knell to
Speaker 1: Moody's career and to the RSS. But of course those
Speaker 1: riots would prove to be only at the beginning, and
Speaker 1: on Thursday's episode, we're going to talk about what came next.
Speaker 1: But you know what it's time to talk about now.
Speaker 1: I don't know the amazing goods and services, the amazing
Speaker 1: plugs that you have to plug what. Yeah, we're in
Speaker 1: the p's on UM. Me and the other members of
Speaker 1: the b J p UM can be found on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at the Sophia so f I y A,
Speaker 1: and you can hear me on my two podcasts. One
Speaker 1: is on iHeart with Miles Gray from Daily Say Guys
Speaker 1: called for Twenty Day Fiance, and the other one is
Speaker 1: Private Parts Unknown with Courtney Kosak, where we travel all
Speaker 1: around the world and talk to people about love and
Speaker 1: sex and sexuality. Yeah, I love Courtney, Courtney's the best love,
Speaker 1: Courtney hate the growing spectr of international fascism. UM. Listen
Speaker 1: to Sophia's podcastle on her website as a quote from you.
Speaker 1: It is, it is. That's my only book jacket quote. Um,
Speaker 1: so listen to those podcasts. Maybe pick up a couple
Speaker 1: of ives, a couple of other weapons. Uh, just you know,
Speaker 1: get ready for your own local ethnic cleansing mobs. Um boy, howdye, Sophie?
Speaker 1: How do we end an episode? You can find Robert
Speaker 1: on Twitter alright, right, okay, you can find us on
Speaker 1: the twin Instagram and at Bastards Pod. You can find
Speaker 1: our sources underneath the episode notes if you just scroll down. Um,
Speaker 1: and you can listen Robert on Worst Year Ever. And
Speaker 1: we have another project coming out very soon. Look for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Women's War March Episode one mar trailer March eighteenth,
Speaker 1: look out for it. So, boys, Sophie, the way you
Speaker 1: handled that was so much more responsible than just telling
Speaker 1: the audience to arm themselves to fight against mobs of violence. Facts.
Speaker 1: I'm here before, thank you? All right, the episode is
Speaker 1: now over. Excellent