Civilisation debate within India.

While Pakistan remains engrossed in internal political strife and altercation, the Indian media is discussing an RSS sponsored agenda point, 'Hinduism: Civilisational State'. Before focusing on this debate, we would like to present the argument on why Saffronization of Science, Culture and History by RSS is based on fear factor.

In one of our syndicate articles published in the Nation in 2019, we had opined that RSS was Saffronizing science and history and developing an absurd sense of superiority whereas the reality is that India was ruled by foreign powers for almost 2000 years. From verbal abuse and trolling of opponents and liberals to physical assault, India was becoming a Lynchistan. It is likely that this hate train will morph into a culture of mass killings and pogroms like the Gujarat massacre under Narendra Modi.

The RSS agenda has indubitable similarities with the ideology of Nazi Germany. German Workers' Party was founded by Dietrich Eckart which later evolved into NSDAP National Socialist Deutsche Arbeit Party aka Nazi Party. Ektart was a key influencer of Hitler. Although Ecktart is not much discussed in Pakistan he has similarities to Golwalkar and Savarkar, the founders of RSS.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum website has published enormous material on rise of Nazism in Germany, its featured article titled 'Culture in the Third Reich: Disseminating the Nazi Worldview' throws some light on how Nazi Party changed the politico cultural landscape of Germany to advance its agenda. The paper suggests that National Socialism represented much more than a political movement. Nazi leaders who came to power in January 1933 wanted to gain political authority, to revise the Versailles Treaty, and to regain and expand upon those lands lost after a humiliating defeat in World War I. But beyond those goals, they also by wanted to change the cultural landscape. They wanted to return the country to traditional 'German' and 'Nordic' values, to remove or limit Jewish, 'foreign,' and 'degenerate' influences, and to shape a racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) which aligned with Nazi ideals. They stressed family, race, and Volk as the highest representations of German values.

Taking a cue from our previously published piece in the Nation and without going into details of how Hitler consolidated his power and what happened to Europe between 1939 and the fall of 3rd Reich, summary of some of the ideological moorings and actions of Nazi party is...