by Meera Nanda
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| Meera Nanda |
On 22 July, Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, set off bombs in the heart of Oslo. He then went on a shooting spree on a nearby island where young members of the Labour Party were holding a summer camp. All told, he killed 77 people that day, many in their teens. He targeted the young people at that summer camp because he saw them as part of a multi-cultural left-wing cabal that was allowing a Muslim takeover of Norway. For him, they were the future "category A traitors" who had to be eliminated so that Europe could be "saved" from Islam. Even though Anders Breivik pulled the trigger, the massacre in Norway was by no means the work of Breivik alone. He is a product of years of immersion in a worldwide web of anti-Islamic ideas espoused by cultural nationalists of all stripes. The 1,518- page manifesto titled 2083: European Declaration of Independ-ence that he posted on the internet just before he went on his killing spree, is a handbook of anti-Islamic literature from all around the world. India figured quite prominently in this manifesto. So far, the India connection has been limited in the media reports to the 100-odd references to India, including Breivik's ringing defence of sanatana dharma movements as allies of his war on Islam. The irony of a Muslim craftsman from Banaras embroidering the sword-through-the-skull badge for his army of "Knights Templars" modelled after 12th century Christian crusaders has also evoked much commentary. But there is a lot more to the India connection than meets the eye.
It is not a coincidence that nearly all the references to India in the Norway manifesto come from writers associated with Voice of India, a Delhi-based publishing house. Since it was founded in 1981, Voice of India (VOI) has been deriding Islam (and Christianity as well) as demonic and violent "political ideologies" not deserving the respect - and constitutional protections - reserved for religions. In recent years, VOI has emerged as the hub where the sanatana dharma movements make common cause with Islam-bashers, anti-Christian pagans, New Age seekers, deep-ecologists/eco-feminists and other disaffected right-wingers from Europe and the United States (US). The Norway manifesto reveals how totally enmeshed it has become in the worldwide network of "anti-Jihadi" groups. VOI represents a significant hardening of the ideology of Hindu nationalism which is important for the secular left to understand. When it comes to explaining Hindutva's European entanglements, the Indian commentators and historians tend to start and end with M S Golwalker, the Nazi-loving "supreme guide" of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940-73. True to form, to explain the massacre in Norway, many Indian commentators have gone right back to We, Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalker's notorious book that was published nearly a century ago in 1939. The infamous passage in which Golwalker praises Adolf Hitler for "…keeping up the purity of the race and culture, by purging [Germany] of the Semitic races - the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here…" is being cited as evidence that Hindu nationalists share a vocabulary of hate with European fanatics like Breivik. The fact that RSS has formally withdrawn the book from Golwalker's collected works and (at least formally) disowned any ideological affiliation with this particular book has not been fully appreciated by the critics.
This fixation on Golwalker, however, overlooks the fact that, like anything else, fascism does not stand still. Right wing nationalisms in Europe and India have moved away from the rhetoric of racial purity to that of "clash of civilisations". A case has been made by some (Bunzl 2005) that "anti-Semitism was invented in the 19th century to police the ethnically pure nation state", while "Islamophobia is a formation of the present" whose purpose is to safeguard a supranational Europe's "Judeo-Christian civilisation from a "fundamentally distinct and supposedly inassimilable culture of Islam". Breivik and the VOI sources he cites see themselves as warriors in this war of civilisations. They are examples of "designer fascisms" that have learned to substitute biological racism with cultural racism, and to justify the latter in a seemingly liberal concern with saving democracy and secularism from cultures which are "inherently" incompatible with liberal ideals. Anders Breivik, for example, is firm in his support for the Jewish people and Israel: He counts being "pro-Israel, anti-racist, antifascist and anti-Nazi" as essential elements of his pan-European "crusader nationalism". Indeed, he lays out plans on how to wean away young people who are attracted to racist groups and indoctrinate them into opposing "cultural Marxists" and Islamists instead. Even though he says he "fears the extinction of the Nordic genotype", he is clearly not a classic white supremacist, as he is open to alliances with non-Muslim Asians and Jews. What he insists upon is the right of European people to enforce the "old rules of our culture" on religious minorities (a vast majority of whom are Muslims), feminists, gays and "cultural Marxists" who preach tolerance and equality for these minorities.
In India, too, a newer generation of Hindu nationalist has come of age that rages not against "Semitic races", but against the "Semitic god" (the common god of the Torah, the Bible and the Koran) and the "monstrous" religions of the Semitic people - Islam, above all, followed some notches below by Christianity (but excluding Judaism which like Hinduism, is an ethic religion, does not proselytise and does not have much of a presence in India). The racial angle, which in India (unlike in Germany) was always more a matter of cultural traditions passed down from hereditary ancestors than a matter of biological markers, has pretty much disappeared from the post-Golwalker Hindu right. And as in the case of the European new right that Breivik represents, the new Hindu right is staunchly pro-Israel: India is now counted among the part of an "unwritten axis" with Israel and the US against "Islamic terrorism" (Prashad 2003). The selfstyled "anti-jihadists" in the US allied with George W Bush's administration and the conservative Heritage Foundation have been pushing for a closer partnership with India. It is not race but a clash of civilisations - between dharmic and Abrahamic civilsations - that is central to the post-Golwalker Hindu right. This new Hindu right has been honing its radical critique of "Semitic monotheistic religions" from the perspective of "yogic spirituality", largely through books published by the Delhi-based publishing house called "Voice of India" (VOI). VOI was founded in 1981 by two ardent Hindu revivalists and anti-Communists, Ram Swarup (1920-1993) and his friend, Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003). From the autobiographical account left behind by Goel, it appears that VOI was born out of frustration with what they saw as anti-intellectualism of RSS.9 They wanted to get rid of the borrowed concepts from the west: instead of judging Hinduism from the vantage point of monotheism (as was done by reformist movements like Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj), they wanted to reverse the gaze and "process and evaluate the heritage of these (monotheistic) creeds in terms of Hindu categories of thought…to evaluate other religions on the pristine premises of Sanatana dharma… " (Goel 2000:9). … VOI has taken it upon itself to add a theological dimension to Savarkar and Golwalker's political ideology of Hindutva.
Evidence for the global reach of the VOI-school of Hindutva can be found in the Norway manifesto. Breivik proclaims grandly that his army of Knights Templar "support the Sanatana [sic] Dharma movements and Indian nationalists in general". He believes that "the Sanatana Dharma movements are suffering persecution from the Indian cultural Marxists as are their European cousins". These cultural Marxists, apparently, are holocaust deniers, or "negationists", i e, they want to hide the "genocide" of Hindus at the hands of Muslims throughout Indian history. All the "authorities" that Breivik cites to argue in support of Hindu nationalist case come from the VOI lineage. The manifesto makes two references to a Belgian writer, Koenraad Elst. … In Europe, Elst is considered a "leading Orientalist" (as Fjordman calls him in the manifesto). He writes frequently for The Brussels Journal, a European nationalist, anti-Islamic blog that has a history of fomenting anti-Islamic ideas and that was cited repeatedly by Breivik in his manifesto. Elst has also worked with think-tanks and publications which are suspected of links with Belgium's far right, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant party, Vlaam Belang. … In India, Elst is the darling of the Hindu right. He is held in great regard as the "intellectual heir" of Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel who practically took him under their wing when he was researching the Ayodhya conflict in the late 1980s. His book, Ram Janmabhoomi vs Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu-Muslim Conflict was published by VOI and released by L K Advani. … Apart from Elst, all the other Indian sources Breivik cites are affiliated with VOI. … Now that Breivik's manifesto has revealed the names of anti-Islamic authors, bloggers, websites and groups that shaped his thinking, the great washing of hands has begun. Just about everyone named by Breivik has issued stern statements distancing themselves from his violent deeds. …Decrying the violence is necessary but not sufficient, because the agenda of the Islamophobic right is much larger than spilling blood in the streets. As he makes it clear over and over again, Breivik's primary objective was to "create a platform to consolidate anti-Marxist forces before Europe is overwhelmed demographically by Muslims". In other words, his first priority was to take down the "cultural Marxists", or multiculturalists, who are supposedly "appeasing" Muslims. … This must surely sound familiar to Indian ears where the Hindu right has turned even those policies that do nothing more than safeguard the constitutional rights of Muslims as citizens of India as "appeasing" them. Indeed, Breivik advises his Hindu nationalist brothers to first go after the so-called appeasers, the "cultural Marxist government" and its left-wing sympathisers - the "category A and B traitors", respectively - and only later resort to the "counterproductive" street attack on Muslims. So the "appeasement" of Muslims is the problem that Hindus and the European right share. … This war against the teachings of Islam is the real story behind the "India connection" to the Norway massacre.
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