Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #1020 Baba Ramdev, Hindutva Fascism and Geopolitics

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: The pri­ma­ry “jump­ing off point” of this pro­gram and the foun­da­tion of the pre­vi­ous two broad­casts is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

  1. Oppo­si­tion to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
  2. The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
  3. Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune. More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
  4. The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS. In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: ‘There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in.’ . . .”
  5. The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
  6. Oth­er RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism.  . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ” 
  7. The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
  8. Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing:  ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

We review of a miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . .  As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing Yoga’s well-doc­u­ment­ed fit­ness ben­e­fits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehi­cle for recon­nect­ing Indi­ans with their myth­ic past. In fact, the dis­ci­pline is root­ed in more recent and Euro­pean-import­ed cul­ture: “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . .”

In fact, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary Yoga dis­ci­pline was made by a Dan­ish Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. . . .”

More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .”

Yoga’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Weimar Ger­many trans­lat­ed into an affin­i­ty for the dis­ci­pline expressed by Nazi SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler, who also saw the phys­i­cal reg­i­men as an exten­sion of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That myth­i­cal Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavis­tic occult ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .”

More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”

This dove­tails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embod­i­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “Aryan” race.

Next, we review of the sweet­heart land deals giv­en to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen school in Japan by the Abe gov­ern­ment and com­par­isons between that arrange­ment and the bar­gain-base­ment land pur­chas­es afford­ed the Ramdev oper­a­tion by the Modi gov­ern­ment.

we “dol­ly out,” so to speak, and begin to exam­ine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broad­er polit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tul­si Gab­bard, the left-cov­er Hin­dut­va fas­cist who nom­i­nat­ed Bernie Sanders for Pres­i­dent in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as con­nec­tions between “Team Trump” and Gab­bard.

  • Trump’s Indi­an part­ners in his real estate projects over­lap the milieu of Mod­i’s BJP (a cat’s paw for the Hin­du nation­al­ist and fas­cist par­ty the RSS.) ” . . . . Mr. Trump’s part­ner in the Trump Tow­er Mum­bai is the Lod­ha Group, found­ed by Man­gal Prab­hat Lod­ha, vice pres­i­dent of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty — cur­rent­ly the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Par­lia­ment — in Maha­rash­tra State. The Lod­ha Group has already nego­ti­at­ed with the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment; it announced a land­mark pur­chase of a prop­er­ty, known as the Wash­ing­ton House, on tony Alta­mount Road, from the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment for 3.75 bil­lion rupees, almost $70 mil­lion. His part­ner in an office com­plex in Gur­gaon, near New Del­hi, is IREO, whose man­ag­ing direc­tor, Lalit Goy­al, is the broth­er-in-law of a Bharatiya Jana­ta mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Sud­han­shu Mit­tal. Mr. Mit­tal, in an inter­view, has denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion with the real estate com­pa­ny. . . .”
  • Trump inter­viewed Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion: “. . . . Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard, a high-pro­file Bernie Sanders sup­port­er dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, is ‘under seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion’ for var­i­ous Cab­i­net posi­tions in Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to a senior offi­cial on the tran­si­tion team. Accord­ing to the offi­cial, the 35-year-old Hawaii con­gress­woman is being looked as a can­di­date for sec­re­tary of state, sec­re­tary of defense or Unit­ed Nations ambas­sador. If select­ed, Gab­bard will be the first woman as well as the youngest pick for Trump’s Cab­i­net. . . .”
  • Trump’s “alt-right” advi­sor Steve Ban­non is a fan of Gab­bard’s: ” . . . .  Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, report­ed­ly likes Gab­bard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islam­ic extrem­ism along with her abil­i­ty to invoke strong anti-estab­lish­ment pop­ulist sen­ti­ment on the left. . . .”
  • Ban­non is also a fan of Naren­dra Modi and has fol­lowed his polit­i­cal rise close­ly: ” . . . . Mr. Trump may be large­ly indif­fer­ent to the rea­sons behind his Hin­du loy­al­ists’ fer­vor, but his most senior advis­ers are not. The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”
  • Gab­bard is also a big fan of Naren­dra Modi, hav­ing been involved with the plan­ning of Mod­i’s U.S. vis­it and net­work­ing with BJP mem­bers: ” . . . . Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She had spo­ken to Modi after his vic­to­ry in the Indi­an gen­er­al elec­tions and con­grat­u­lat­ed him and the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP). She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
  • On a trip to India, Gab­bard net­worked with both the BJP and the RSS, the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty for which Mod­i’s BJP is a cat’s paw. (All of Mod­i’s cab­i­net appoint­ments were drawn from the RSS. Mod­eled on the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty and Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts, the RSS killed Gand­hi.): “. . . . Speak­ing at a fundrais­ing event for the BJP in August 2014 . . . Gab­bard said that Modi’s elec­tion vic­to­ry was only pos­si­ble because ‘peo­ple stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.’ . . . Gab­bard was treat­ed as roy­al­ty on her vis­it to India last year. As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her ‘the Sangh’s mas­cot’ in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”

We also review Pierre Omid­yar’s sig­nif­i­cant role in both India and Ukraine:

  • Omid­yar helped finance the rise of Modi and his Hin­dut­va fas­cist BJP in India. Most of Mod­i’s cab­i­net selec­tions were drawn from the RSS: ” . . . . This week, India’s new­ly-elect­ed ultra­na­tion­al­ist leader Naren­dra Modi unveiled his cab­i­net, three-quar­ters of whom come from a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary out­fit, the RSS (Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh) . . . .  found­ed in 1925 by open admir­ers of Mus­soli­ni and Hitler; in 1948, an RSS mem­ber assas­si­nat­ed paci­fist Mahat­ma Gand­hi. . . .”
  • The head of Omid­yar’s char­i­ta­ble oper­a­tions in India–Jayant Sin­ha–became Mod­i’s finance min­is­ter and hon­ored a con­vict­ed “cow vig­i­lante” mur­der­er.
  • Omid­yar helped finance the Maid­an coup in Ukraine, which brought to pow­er Ukrain­ian fas­cists evolved from the OUN/B.
  • Omid­yar worked with U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment–a fre­quent vehi­cle for U.S. covert operation–to effect the Maid­an coup.
  • Omid­yar has now part­nered with the inap­pro­pri­ate­ly-named Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy to fur­ther his ends. NED is lit­tle more than a front for con­tin­ued covert oper­a­tions.
  • Omid­yar’s charges in Ukraine have been com­plic­it in the mur­der of jour­nal­ists crit­i­cal of their activ­i­ties.
  • Omid­yar’s OUN/B suc­ces­sor asso­ciates in Ukraine have worked to intim­i­date jour­nal­ists with whom they dis­agree, tar­ring them with the use­ful sobri­quet of “Kremlin/Russian” dupes.

Omid­yar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an appar­ent asset of U.S. intel­li­gence and (per­haps) the Under­ground Reich–are best viewed in the con­text of the Earth Island and a flank­ing maneu­ver on Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

With the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion fas­cists in pow­er via the Maid­an coup and a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Petro Poroshenko, pres­sure is being put direct­ly on Rus­si­a’s flank. With the Hin­dut­va fas­cists of Naren­dra Modi/BJP/RSS in pow­er in India, pres­sure is being put on Chi­na’s flank: U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects “the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,” as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous.  Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . .On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States.  Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .

 Of sig­nif­i­cance for us in the con­text of anti-Chi­na/Earth Island geopo­lit­i­cals are the anti-com­mu­nist util­i­ty of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dove­tail­ing of a Ramdev/Patanjali instal­la­tion in Assam with the needs of the Indi­an Air Force for a base in that area:

  • Ramdev and the  B.J.P. appear to have util­i­ty as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
  • Also of sig­nif­i­cance is the dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force:  “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”

We con­clude the pro­gram with review of a Hin­dut­va chant used by Baba Ramdev and Naren­dra Modi.

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have spo­ken of Ramde­v’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invo­ca­tion, high­light­ing Ramde­v’s work­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”

Naren­dra Modi echoed this in his Sep­tem­ber 2015 speech at the SAP Cen­ter in San Jose. (As men­tioned above, Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange Mod­i’s tour.) An audio excerpt con­cludes this pro­gram. For con­ve­nience, we have includ­ed a por­tion of text from Mod­i’s speech.

“. . . . Please repeat after me “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Say it loud­ly; I want the voice to boom all the way to India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats), Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats) . . . .”

1. Begin­ning with review of ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between RSS Hin­dut­va fas­cists and the fol­low­ers of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, we high­light key fea­tures of what may seem to many to be a clas­sic case of polit­i­cal “strange bed­fel­lows.” Key con­sid­er­a­tions in the Hitler/Mussolini/Hindutva fas­cist affin­i­ty include:

  1. Oppo­si­tion to the British Empire (as con­sti­tut­ed), admi­ra­tion for the domes­tic agen­das of the Fuehrer and Il Duce, as well as the mil­i­tary prowess shown by the Euro­pean Axis nations: “. . . . In the decades pri­or to that momen­tous event, senior RSS mem­bers had direct links to both Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Ger­many. Part of the RSS’ fas­ci­na­tion with these total­i­tar­i­an regimes was their shared oppo­si­tion to the British Empire — how­ev­er, it went far beyond that. The RSS (as well as mul­ti­tudes of oth­er Hin­du nation­al­ists) admired the way Mus­soli­ni and Hitler reor­ga­nized their respec­tive nations so quick­ly from the wreck­age of war to build a pow­er­ful econ­o­my and mil­i­tary under the ban­ner of patri­o­tism and nation­al­ism. . . .”
  2. The stud­ied nature of the Hindutva/Hitler/Mussolini affin­i­ty: ” . . . . Marzia Caso­lari, an Ital­ian schol­ar who stud­ied Indi­an pol­i­tics, once wrote of RSS’ con­nec­tions with Euro­pean fas­cism: The exis­tence of direct con­tacts between the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the [Ital­ian] Fas­cist regime, includ­ing Mus­soli­ni, and Hin­du nation­al­ists demon­strates that Hin­du nation­al­ism had much more than an abstract inter­est in the ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice of fas­cism. The inter­est of Indi­an Hin­du nation­al­ists in fas­cism and Mus­soli­ni must not be con­sid­ered as dic­tat­ed by an occa­sion­al curios­i­ty, con­fined to a few indi­vid­u­als; rather, it should be con­sid­ered as the cul­mi­nat­ing result of the atten­tion that Hin­du nation­al­ists… focused on Ital­ian dic­ta­tor­ship and its leader. To them, fas­cism appeared to be an exam­ple of con­ser­v­a­tive rev­o­lu­tion. . . .”
  3. Belief in the com­mon, mytho­log­i­cal “Aryan” ori­gins of India and Ger­many: ” . . . . Much of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and imagery came from the sym­bols and his­to­ry of ancient India – indeed, the infa­mous Nazi swasti­ka was based on a Hin­du sym­bol of strength and good for­tune. More­over, the leg­endary his­to­ry (some would say, myth) of the inva­sion of pre­his­toric India by the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Aryan’ tribes would (cen­turies lat­er) pro­vide Hitler with his notion of a ‘super mas­ter race’ that was des­tined to dom­i­nate the world. . . .”
  4. The enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni by V.D. Savarkar, the ide­o­log­i­cal founder of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and the pri­ma­ry archi­tect of Gand­hi’s assas­si­na­tion: ” . . . . Per­haps there was no greater admir­er of Hitler and Mus­soli­ni in India than Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, anoth­er lead­ing mem­ber of RSS. In a speech deliv­ered in 1940 (after the Sec­ond World War had com­menced), Savarkar said: ‘There is no rea­son to sup­pose that Hitler must be a human mon­ster because he pass­es off as a Nazi or Churchill is a demigod because he calls him­self a Demo­c­rat. Nazism proved unde­ni­ably the sav­ior of Ger­many under the set of cir­cum­stances Ger­many was placed in.’ . . .”
  5. The Hin­du Mahasab­ha’s sup­port for a Hitler/RSS con­junc­tion: ” . . . . Indeed, many Hin­du nation­al­ists also derid­ed Gand­hi for oppos­ing Nazism and fas­cism. In 1939, a spokesman for the Hin­du Mahasab­ha (Hin­du Par­ty) inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed Ger­many with Indi­an cul­ture and peo­ple. ‘Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan cul­ture, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Swasti­ka, her patron­age of Vedic learn­ing and the ardent cham­pi­onship of the tra­di­tion of Indo-Ger­man­ic civ­i­liza­tion are wel­comed by the reli­gious and sen­si­ble Hin­dus of India with a jubi­lant hope,’ the spokesman blus­tered. ‘Only a few Social­ists head­ed by… Nehru have cre­at­ed a bub­ble of resent­ment against the present gov­ern­ment of Ger­many, but their activ­i­ties are far from hav­ing any sig­nif­i­cance in India.’ He added: ‘Germany’s cru­sade against the ene­mies of Aryan cul­ture will bring all the Aryan nations of the world to their sens­es and awak­en the Indi­an Hin­dus for the restora­tion of their lost glo­ry. . . .’ ”
  6. Oth­er RSS lead­ers saw use­ful sim­i­lar­i­ties in the eth­nic chau­vin­ist phi­los­o­phy of both Hitler and Hin­dut­va fas­cism.  . . . . Anoth­er senior RSS mem­ber, Mad­hav Sadashiv Gol­walkar, also praised Nazism and believed the ide­ol­o­gy should be applied to India. ‘Ger­man race pride has now become the top­ic of the day,’ he wrote. ‘To keep up the puri­ty of the race and its cul­ture, Ger­many shocked the world by her purg­ing the coun­try of the Semit­ic Races — the Jews. Race pride at its high­est has been man­i­fest­ed here. Ger­many has also shown how well-nigh impos­si­ble it is for races and cul­tures, hav­ing dif­fer­ences going to the root, to be assim­i­lat­ed into one unit­ed whole, a good les­son for us in Hin­dus­tan [India] to learn and prof­it by.’ Gol­walkar enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly advo­cat­ed for an India dom­i­nat­ed by Hin­dus. ‘There are only two cours­es open to the for­eign ele­ments, either to merge them­selves in the nation­al race and adopt its cul­ture, or to live at its mer­cy so long as the nation­al race may allow them to do so and to quit the coun­try at the sweet will of the nation­al race,’ he wrote. . . . ”
  7. The eth­nic ide­o­log­i­cal par­a­digm of Hin­dut­va fas­cism and Nazism meld well: ” . . . . If one were to replace ‘Hin­du’ with ‘Ger­man,’ Golwalkar’s words would match Hitler’s rhetoric almost exact­ly. . . .”
  8. Savarkar also saw Nazi and RSS eth­nic the­o­ry and pol­i­cy as con­verg­ing:  ” . . . . Savarkar also spelled out why Hin­dus should rule India and oth­ers should either be expelled or merged into the Hin­du major­i­ty. ‘The Aryans who set­tled in India at the dawn of his­to­ry already formed a nation, now embod­ied in the Hin­dus,’ he wrote. ‘Hin­dus are bound togeth­er not only by the love they bear to a com­mon father­land and by the com­mon blood that cours­es through their veins and keeps our hearts throb­bing and our affec­tion warm but also by the of the com­mon homage we pay to our great civ­i­liza­tion, our Hin­du cul­ture. . . .”

1e. We review of a miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . .  As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”

1f.   In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing Yoga’s well-doc­u­ment­ed fit­ness ben­e­fits, Ramdev presents Yoga as a vehi­cle for recon­nect­ing Indi­ans with their myth­ic past. In fact, the dis­ci­pline is root­ed in more recent and Euro­pean-import­ed cul­ture: “. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. . . .”

Niels Bukh

In fact, a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to con­tem­po­rary Yoga dis­ci­pline was made by a Dan­ish Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er named Niels Bukh. ” . . . . Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. . . .”

The Yoga influ­ence on Nazism and Hin­dut­va fas­cism should NOT be mis­con­strued as cast­ing asper­sions on the dis­ci­pline or its many adher­ents with the onus of total­i­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy.

  “Baba Ramdev’s Holy War” by Robert F. Worth; The New York Times Mag­a­zine; 7/29/2017.

. . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. Bukh, need­less to say, has been con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten by both Indi­ans and the yoga-lov­ing celebri­ties of Hol­ly­wood. . . .

2. More about Niels Bukh: ” . . . . His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. . . .”

  “Niels Bukh;” Wikipedia.com

. . . . His 1924 book “Grundgym­nas­tik eller prim­i­tiv gym­nas­tik” (Basic or prim­i­tive gym­nas­tics) was a man­u­al in his method, which was lat­er adopt­ed by orga­ni­za­tions such as the YMCA. His­to­ri­an Mark Sin­gle­ton has argued that through the YMCA and their gym­nas­tics train­ing in British India, Bukh’s exer­cis­es influ­enced Tiru­malai Krish­na­macharya’s style of Yoga[2][3][4] In 1931 his gym­nas­tics team toured the world, vis­it­ing Japan where his sys­tem became high­ly influ­en­tial. His sys­tem of exer­cise became high­ly pop­u­lar in Ger­many, and in 1933 Bukh pub­licly expressed his alle­giance to the Nation­al Social­ist cause and its aim of improv­ing the health of the Aryan race through gym­nas­tics. This made Bukh unpop­u­lar in Den­mark, espe­cial­ly after the Ger­man occu­pa­tion of Den­mark in 1940. . . .

3. Yoga’s pop­u­lar­i­ty in Weimar Ger­many trans­lat­ed into an affin­i­ty for the dis­ci­pline expressed by Nazi SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler, who also saw the phys­i­cal reg­i­men as an exten­sion of the ancient “Aryan” past of India. That myth­i­cal Aryan past also became part of SS and Nazi atavis­tic occult ide­ol­o­gy. ” . . . yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, ‘Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism’. . . .”

  “Nazi Lead­ers Fas­ci­nat­ed by Yoga” [Yoga Jour­nal Edi­tors]; Yoga Jour­nal; 2/24/2012.

Yoga is many things to many people—for some it is a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice while oth­ers con­sid­er it a phys­i­cal exer­cise. But for most, what comes to mind when they think of yoga are scenes of peace and tranquility—at the least the search for peace and tran­quil­i­ty.

It’s hard to imag­ine, then, that yoga was rec­om­mend­ed to death camp guards in Nazi Ger­many. But that’s exact­ly what his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke found as he researched his new book, Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism.

“It is asso­ci­at­ed with men­tal equi­lib­ri­um, the search for wis­dom and inner peace and is not con­sid­ered to be about force or per­se­cu­tion,” Tietke told The Dai­ly Mail. “Nev­er the less, there is also this side to the his­to­ry of yoga.”

It’s a very dark his­to­ry.

Tietke’s research shows that not only were there S.S. lead­ers who were fas­ci­nat­ed with yoga, they even used yoga’s his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy to jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. S.S. Cap­tain Jakob Wil­helm Hauer wrote “yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us to pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles,” while Com­man­der Hein­rich Himm­ler actu­al­ly con­sid­ered the Bha­gavad Gita as a blue­print for cru­el­ty. He iden­ti­fied with the atti­tude of “unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose,’ ” wrote Tietke.

4. More about the SS/Yoga con­nec­tion: ” . . . . It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’ . . . . Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went. He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. He wrote; ‘He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cized atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ . . . . ”

This dove­tails with the SS mythology/ideology, which saw the SS as the embod­i­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “Aryan” race.

  ” ‘Ve Hav vays of Mak­ing You Relax’: How SS Rec­om­mend­ed Yoga to Death Camp Guards as a Good Way to De-Stress” by Alan Hall; Dai­ly Mail Online [UK]; 2/22/2012.

A Ger­man his­to­ri­an has dis­cov­ered how the SS in Nazi Ger­many rec­om­mend­ed its mem­bers — includ­ing death camp guards — prac­tice yoga to enrich their ‘mind, bod­ies and spir­its.’

The first ever book prob­ing the Third Reich’s fas­ci­na­tion with the ancient dis­ci­pline — intend­ed to attain ‘per­fect spir­i­tu­al insight and tran­quil­i­ty’ — was pub­lished this week, enti­tled Yoga In Nation­al Social­ism by his­to­ri­an and yoga expert Math­ias Tietke.

It shows how S.S. over­lord Hein­rich Himm­ler was fas­ci­nat­ed with the dis­ci­pline and per­vert­ed it and its ancient roots into a phi­los­o­phy to jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust. . . .

. . . . Tietke ploughed through thou­sands of Third Reich doc­u­ments to chron­i­cle the his­to­ry of this most peace­ful of pur­suits in the time of the sav­agery of Nazism.

As well as the book he is plan­ning an exhi­bi­tion in Berlin lat­er this year in the Gestapo muse­um called the Topog­ra­phy of Ter­ror.

The Nazi inter­est in yoga lay in its roots in the 19th cen­tu­ry when India mys­ti­cism was a favourite pur­suit of the mid­dle and upper class­es and a great influ­ence on roman­tic poets and philoso­phers.

Dur­ing the Wiemar Repub­lic, as the Nazis gained strength, yoga enjoyed a boom among a peo­ple weary of war, infla­tion, unem­ploy­ment and mis­ery.

More than 50 yoga books were pub­lished in the 1920’s in Berlin alone. And, as the Nazis cor­rupt­ed most things they touched, so it was with yoga.

It was seized on by race experts in the par­ty as being the pur­suit of ‘Ayran’ peo­ple. Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, an S.S. cap­tain and yoga expert, who influ­enced his chief Himm­ler and con­vinced him that ‘yoga can inter­nal­ly arm us and pre­pare us for the forth­com­ing bat­tles.’

In 1937, four years after the Nazis attained pow­er, the coun­try’s first yoga cen­tre opened up in Berlin and oper­at­ed until it was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943.

The teacher who ran it had dis­ci­ples in 50 Ger­man towns and cities. Himm­ler, obsessed as he was with hocus-pocus race the­o­ries and mys­ti­cism relat­ing to his S.S. ‘super­men,’ car­ried around a Ger­man copy of the Bha­gavad Gita with him wher­ev­er he went.

He regard­ed the ancient San­skrit epic as being a blue­print for cru­el­ty and ter­ror, using it, said Tietke, to ulti­mate­ly jus­ti­fy the Holo­caust.

He wrote; “He iden­ti­fied him­self and the SS with the old Indi­an Ksha­triya caste and its pub­li­cised atti­tude of unscrupu­lous killing for one’s ‘high­er pur­pose.’ ”

Tietke says Himm­ler’s atti­tude to ‘kar­ma’ was nev­er bet­ter dis­played than at the secret speech he made to senior S.S. men at Poz­nan in 1943 when he spoke of the noble, vir­tu­ous work his butch­ers were per­form­ing in elim­i­nat­ing the Jews of Europe and Rus­sia.

Himm­ler was also inter­est­ed in oth­er ear­ly Indi­an reli­gious writ­ings of India, includ­ing the Rigve­da which con­tains the mythol­o­gy of the Hin­du gods.  “These cel­e­brat­ed the racism of the Aryan immi­grat­ing from cen­tral Asia to India, killing and dri­ving out des­ig­nat­ed ‘infe­ri­or’ oppo­nents,” said Tietke.

5. In FTR #‘s 969 and 970, we exam­ined the resur­gence of fas­cism in Japan.

Those pro­grams update the re-emer­gence of the polit­i­cal forces that drove the con­quests of Impe­r­i­al Japan, as well as attempts to insti­tute an Orwellian re-write of Japan’s involve­ment in World War II.

Key the­mat­ic ele­ments of those broad­casts include an omi­nous res­o­nance between Japan­ese revi­sion­ist schools Tsukamo­to, Morit­o­mo Gakuen and the Native-Land-Lov­ing School, some of whose alum­ni assas­si­nat­ed Japan­ese prime min­is­ter Inukai on May 15, 1932. The “May 15th Inci­dent,” as it is known, was a key ele­ment in the rise of fas­cism in Japan.

“. . . . In 1939, his [Kos­aburo Tachibana’s] admir­ers enabled him to estab­lish a school. He called it the Native-Land-Lov­ing School (Aiky­o­juku). Every­body in Japan with a mes­sage to deliv­er or an axe to grind opens a school. . . . Those schools in the hands of the patri­ot­ic soci­eties are at once a method of train­ing young men for strong-arm work and a plau­si­ble excuse for extort­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the rich and timid. . . .”

Sev­er­al mem­bers of Abe’s gov­ern­ment net­work with Japan­ese neo-Nazis. Some of those Nazi acolytes advo­cate using the Nazi method for seiz­ing pow­er in Japan. Is Abe’s gov­ern­ment doing just that?

In addi­tion to finance min­is­ter (and deputy prime-min­is­ter) Taro Aso, for­mer defense min­is­ter Tomi Ina­da and inte­ri­or min­is­ter Sanae Takaichi are appar­ent expo­nents of Nazi polit­i­cal method­ol­o­gy. ” . . . . Ina­da made news ear­lier this month after pho­tos cir­cu­lated of her and anoth­er female in the new cab­i­net pos­ing with a neo-Nazi par­ty leader. Both denied know­ing the neo-Nazi well but lat­er were revealed to have con­tributed blurbs for an adver­tise­ment prais­ing the out-of-print book Hitler’s Elec­tion Strategy. Coin­ci­den­tally, Vice-Prime Min­is­ter [and Finance Minister–D.E.],Taro Aso, is also a long-time admir­er of Nazi polit­i­cal strat­egy, and has sug­gested Japan fol­low the Nazi Par­ty tem­plate to sneak con­sti­tu­tional change past the pub­lic. . . . it is a lit­tle wor­ri­some that [Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter] Sanae Takaichi . . . is the oth­er female min­is­ter who was pho­tographed with a neo-Nazi leader and is a fan of Hitler. . . .”

Much of FTR #969 focus­es on Shin­zo (and wife Akie) Abe’s sup­port for the Morit­o­mo Gakuen.

  1. Akie Abe was the hon­orary prin­ci­pal of the Morit­o­mo Gakuen (still being con­struct­ed) and con­tributed a mil­lion yen toward its con­struc­tion.
  2. Abe him­self appar­ent­ly donat­ed mon­ey to the con­struc­tion of Morit­o­mo Gakuen.
  3. Tomo­mi Ina­da sup­port­ed Morit­o­mo Gakuen, hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed the school as a lawyer. She lat­er claimed she could not remem­ber hav­ing done so.
  4. Morit­o­mo Gakuen Yasunori Kagoike is a mem­ber of Nip­pon Kai­gi.
  5. Morit­o­mo Gakuen appar­ent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from favors from Taro Aso’s finance min­istry.

In this pro­gram, we update the inves­ti­ga­tion into Akie Abe’s inter­ces­sion on the part of the Morit­o­mo Gakuen, not­ing the “sweet­heart deal” giv­en to the Morit­o­mo Gakuen school by the Abe gov­ern­ment. The sim­i­lar­i­ty with the real estate deals giv­en to Baba Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions by the Modi gov­ern­ment should be not­ed.

“Scan­dals Dog Abe as He Pre­pares to Meet Trump” by Motoko Rich; The New York Times; 4/17/2018.

 . . . . But last month, the Finance Min­istry said an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that bureau­crats had tam­pered with offi­cial doc­u­ments relat­ed to the sale of pub­lic land to an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion group, known as Morit­o­mo Gakuen, at a steeply dis­count­ed price. Mr. Abe’s wife, Akie, served as a one­time hon­orary prin­ci­pal of a planned ele­men­tary school that Morit­o­mo want­ed to build on the dis­put­ed land.

 In one of the most dam­ag­ing find­ings, the min­istry said that offi­cials had scrubbed Mrs. Abe’s name and alleged remarks encour­ag­ing the deal from the doc­u­ments when they were first sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment, known in Japan as the Diet. Then this month, the Finance Min­istry told Par­lia­ment that a bureau­crat had urged a lawyer for Morit­o­mo to lie about how much it would cost to remove garbage from the pub­lic land in order to jus­ti­fy the sale at a dis­count­ed price. . . .

6.  Next, we “dol­ly out,” so to speak, and begin to exam­ine the Modi/RSS/Ramdev axis in a broad­er polit­i­cal and geopo­lit­i­cal con­text.

We review the strong links between “Team Trump” and the Modi/BJP/RSS axis. There are also strong links between Tul­si Gab­bard, the left-cov­er Hin­dut­va fas­cist who nom­i­nat­ed Bernie Sanders for Pres­i­dent in 2016 and The Modi/BJP/RSS axis., as well as con­nec­tions between “Team Trump” and Gab­bard.

  • Trump’s Indi­an part­ners in his real estate projects over­lap the milieu of Mod­i’s BJP (a cat’s paw for the Hin­du nation­al­ist and fas­cist par­ty the RSS.) ” . . . . Mr. Trump’s part­ner in the Trump Tow­er Mum­bai is the Lod­ha Group, found­ed by Man­gal Prab­hat Lod­ha, vice pres­i­dent of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty — cur­rent­ly the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Par­lia­ment — in Maha­rash­tra State. The Lod­ha Group has already nego­ti­at­ed with the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment; it announced a land­mark pur­chase of a prop­er­ty, known as the Wash­ing­ton House, on tony Alta­mount Road, from the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment for 3.75 bil­lion rupees, almost $70 mil­lion. His part­ner in an office com­plex in Gur­gaon, near New Del­hi, is IREO, whose man­ag­ing direc­tor, Lalit Goy­al, is the broth­er-in-law of a Bharatiya Jana­ta mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Sud­han­shu Mit­tal. Mr. Mit­tal, in an inter­view, has denied hav­ing any con­nec­tion with the real estate com­pa­ny. . . .”
  • Trump inter­viewed Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion: “. . . . Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard, a high-pro­file Bernie Sanders sup­port­er dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries, is ‘under seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion’ for var­i­ous Cab­i­net posi­tions in Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to a senior offi­cial on the tran­si­tion team. Accord­ing to the offi­cial, the 35-year-old Hawaii con­gress­woman is being looked as a can­di­date for sec­re­tary of state, sec­re­tary of defense or Unit­ed Nations ambas­sador. If select­ed, Gab­bard will be the first woman as well as the youngest pick for Trump’s Cab­i­net. . . .”
  • Trump’s “alt-right” advi­sor Steve Ban­non is a fan of Gab­bard’s: ” . . . .  Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, report­ed­ly likes Gab­bard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islam­ic extrem­ism along with her abil­i­ty to invoke strong anti-estab­lish­ment pop­ulist sen­ti­ment on the left. . . .”
  • Ban­non is also a fan of Naren­dra Modi and has fol­lowed his polit­i­cal rise close­ly: ” . . . . Mr. Trump may be large­ly indif­fer­ent to the rea­sons behind his Hin­du loy­al­ists’ fer­vor, but his most senior advis­ers are not. The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”
  • Gab­bard is also a big fan of Naren­dra Modi, hav­ing been involved with the plan­ning of Mod­i’s U.S. vis­it and net­work­ing with BJP mem­bers: ” . . . . Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She had spo­ken to Modi after his vic­to­ry in the Indi­an gen­er­al elec­tions and con­grat­u­lat­ed him and the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (BJP). She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
  • On a trip to India, Gab­bard net­worked with both the BJP and the RSS, the Hin­du nationalist/fascist par­ty for which Mod­i’s BJP is a cat’s paw. (All of Mod­i’s cab­i­net appoint­ments were drawn from the RSS. Mod­eled on the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty and Mus­solin­i’s black­shirts, the RSS killed Gand­hi.): “. . . . Speak­ing at a fundrais­ing event for the BJP in August 2014 . . . Gab­bard said that Modi’s elec­tion vic­to­ry was only pos­si­ble because ‘peo­ple stood up, one by one by one by one, and said we will demand that this change occurs.’ . . . Gab­bard was treat­ed as roy­al­ty on her vis­it to India last year. As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her ‘the Sangh’s mas­cot’ in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”

7. In this pro­gram, we review Pierre Omid­yar’s sig­nif­i­cant role in both India and Ukraine:

  • Omid­yar helped finance the rise of Modi and his Hin­dut­va fas­cist BJP in India. Most of Mod­i’s cab­i­net selec­tions were drawn from the RSS: ” . . . . This week, India’s new­ly-elect­ed ultra­na­tion­al­ist leader Naren­dra Modi unveiled his cab­i­net, three-quar­ters of whom come from a fas­cist para­mil­i­tary out­fit, the RSS (Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh) . . . .  found­ed in 1925 by open admir­ers of Mus­soli­ni and Hitler; in 1948, an RSS mem­ber assas­si­nat­ed paci­fist Mahat­ma Gand­hi. . . .”
  • The head of Omid­yar’s char­i­ta­ble oper­a­tions in India–Jayant Sin­ha–became Mod­i’s finance min­is­ter and hon­ored a con­vict­ed “cow vig­i­lante” mur­der­er.
  • Omid­yar helped finance the Maid­an coup in Ukraine, which brought to pow­er Ukrain­ian fas­cists evolved from the OUN/B.
  • Omid­yar worked with U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment–a fre­quent vehi­cle for U.S. covert operation–to effect the Maid­an coup.
  • Omid­yar has now part­nered with the inap­pro­pri­ate­ly-named Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy to fur­ther his ends. NED is lit­tle more than a front for con­tin­ued covert oper­a­tions.
  • Omid­yar’s charges in Ukraine have been com­plic­it in the mur­der of jour­nal­ists crit­i­cal of their activ­i­ties.
  • Omid­yar’s OUN/B suc­ces­sor asso­ciates in Ukraine have worked to intim­i­date jour­nal­ists with whom they dis­agree, tar­ring them with the use­ful sobri­quet of “Kremlin/Russian” dupes.

8. Omid­yar’s work in both Ukraine and India–operating as an appar­ent asset of U.S. intel­li­gence and (per­haps) the Under­ground Reich–are best viewed in the con­text of the Earth Island and a flank­ing maneu­ver on Rus­sia and Chi­na.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

With the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion fas­cists in pow­er via the Maid­an coup and a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion gov­ern­ment with Petro Poroshenko, pres­sure is being put direct­ly on Rus­si­a’s flank. With the Hin­dut­va fas­cists of Naren­dra Modi/BJP/RSS in pow­er in India, pres­sure is being put on Chi­na’s flank: U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects ‘the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,’ as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both. Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous.  Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . .”

“The Pen­gagon Expands Its Provoca­tive Encir­clement of Chi­na” by Michael T. Klare; Con­sor­tium News; 6/20/2018.

­U.S. Sec­re­tary of Defense James Mat­tis announced a momen­tous shift in Amer­i­can glob­al strate­gic pol­i­cy in a lit­tle noticed state­ment on May 30.

From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacif­ic Com­mand (PACOM), which over­sees all U.S. mil­i­tary forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacif­ic Com­mand (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mat­tis explained, reflects ‘the increas­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the Indi­an and Pacif­ic Oceans,’ as well as Washington’s deter­mi­na­tion to remain the dom­i­nant pow­er in both.

Such a name change may not sound like much, but some­day you may look back and real­ize that it couldn’t have been more con­se­quen­tial or omi­nous.  Think of it as a sig­nal that the U.S. mil­i­tary is already set­ting the stage for even­tu­al con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. . . . On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States.  Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .

. . . . Con­sid­er the back­drop to the name change: in recent months, the U.S. has stepped up its naval patrols in waters adja­cent to Chi­nese-occu­pied islands in the South Chi­na Sea (as has Chi­na), rais­ing the prospect of future clash­es between the war­ships of the two coun­tries. Such moves have been accom­pa­nied by ever more threat­en­ing lan­guage from the Depart­ment of Defense (DoD), indi­cat­ing an intent to do noth­ing less than engage Chi­na mil­i­tar­i­ly if that country’s build-up in the region con­tin­ues.  “When it comes down to intro­duc­ing what they have done in the South Chi­na Sea, there are con­se­quences,” Mat­tis declared at the Shangri La Strate­gic Dia­logue in Sin­ga­pore on June 2nd.

As a pre­lim­i­nary indi­ca­tion of what he meant by this, Mat­tis prompt­ly dis­in­vit­ed the Chi­nese from the world’s largest multi­na­tion­al naval exer­cise, the Rim of the Pacif­ic (RIMPAC), con­duct­ed annu­al­ly under Amer­i­can aus­pices.  “But that’s a rel­a­tive­ly small con­se­quence,” he added omi­nous­ly, “and I believe there are much larg­er con­se­quences in the future.”  With that in mind, he soon announced that the Pen­ta­gon is plan­ning to con­duct “a steady drum­beat” of naval oper­a­tions in waters abut­ting those Chi­nese-occu­pied islands, which should raise the heat between the two coun­tries and could cre­ate the con­di­tions for a mis­cal­cu­la­tion, a mis­take, or even an acci­dent at sea that might lead to far worse.

In addi­tion to its plans to height­en naval ten­sions in seas adja­cent to Chi­na, the Pen­ta­gon has been labor­ing to strength­en its mil­i­tary ties with U.S.-friendly states on China’s perime­ter, all clear­ly part of a long-term dri­ve, in Cold War fash­ion, to “con­tain” Chi­nese pow­er in Asia.

On June 8th, for exam­ple, the DoD launched Mal­abar 2018, a joint Pacif­ic Ocean naval exer­cise involv­ing forces from India, Japan, and the Unit­ed States.  Incor­po­rat­ing once neu­tral India into America’s anti-Chi­nese “Pacif­ic” alliance sys­tem in this and oth­er ways has, in fact, become a major twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry goal of the Pen­ta­gon, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant new threat to Chi­na. . . .

9. Of sig­nif­i­cance for us in the con­text of anti-Chi­na/Earth Island geopo­lit­i­cals are the anti-com­mu­nist util­i­ty of the BJP/RSS/Ramdev nexus and the dove­tail­ing of a Ramdev/Patanjali instal­la­tion in Assam with the needs of the Indi­an Air Force for a base in that area:

  • Ramdev and the  B.J.P. appear to have util­i­ty as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
  • Also of sig­nif­i­cance is the dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force:  “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”

10a. In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we have spo­ken of Ramde­v’s use of a Modi/BJP/RSS invo­ca­tion, high­light­ing Ramde­v’s work­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes–in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”

10b Naren­dra Modi echoed this in his Sep­tem­ber 2015 speech at the SAP Cen­ter in San Jose. (As men­tioned above, Tul­si Gab­bard helped arrange Mod­i’s tour.) An audio excerpt con­cludes this pro­gram. For con­ve­nience, we have includ­ed a por­tion of text from Mod­i’s speech.

“Com­plete Text and Video of Naren­dra Modi’s Speech at SAP Cen­ter: Watch;” India West Online; 9/29/2015.

. . . . Please repeat after me “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.” Say it loud­ly; I want the voice to boom all the way to India, Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats), Bharat Mata Ki Jai, (audi­ence repeats) . . . . 

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #1020 Baba Ramdev, Hindutva Fascism and Geopolitics”

  1. An inter­est­ing arti­cle about Himm­ler and Hin­duism, con­tributed by a lis­ten­er:

    Hein­rich Himm­ler: The Nazi Hin­du

    Analy­sis

    By Palash R. Ghosh

    http://www.trimondi.de/EN/Himmler-Hindu.htm

    Posted by Dave Emory | May 15, 2019, 4:21 pm
  2. Here’s a pair of arti­cles about what appear to be the grow­ing chal­lenges in India deal­ing with the Delta vari­ant of the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus as anti-vac­cine rumors — like it will kill you or make you mag­net­ic — con­tin­ue to spread, espe­cial­ly over plat­forms like What­sApp. And guess who is play­ing a star­ring role in spread­ing COVID mis­in­for­ma­tion: Baba Ramdev. Because of course he is.

    But he isn’t just push­ing herbal med­ical treat­ments his com­pa­ny sells on his audi­ences over mod­ern med­ical treat­ments. He was trash­ing the use of oxy­gen and ven­ti­la­tors for deeply sick patients.

    Oh, and it also sounds like large num­bers of vil­lage elders are dying but the Modi gov­ern­ment isn’t count­ing them as Covid deaths in many cas­es. So the ques­tion of what kind of impact Baba’s mis­in­for­ma­tion is hav­ing on the most vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions in India is dif­fi­cult to answer oth­er than acknowl­edg­ing that the real num­ber is cer­tain­ly a lot high­er than the offi­cial num­ber. And the offi­cial num­bers are going from bad to worse:

    The New York Times

    One Vil­lage Quelled the Virus. The Next Was Over­run. It’s a Bad Sign for India.

    The uneven response to India’s cat­a­stroph­ic sec­ond wave, cou­pled with wide­spread vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy, indi­cates that the coro­n­avirus is here to stay.

    By Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar

    July 11, 2021

    GARH MUKTESHWAR, India — When a dev­as­tat­ing sec­ond wave of Covid-19 infec­tions reached India’s coun­try­side this spring, the vil­lage of Khilwai took imme­di­ate action. Two test­ing cen­ters were set up, and 30 pos­i­tive cas­es were iso­lat­ed. The out­break was con­tained with just three deaths.

    It was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry in the two vil­lages on either side of Khilwai. Test­ing remained lim­it­ed. The local health cen­ter in one vil­lage had been closed, its staff sent away to a larg­er hos­pi­tal. The coro­n­avirus spread, and at least 30 peo­ple in each vil­lage died with Covid-19 symp­toms.

    But even as the three vil­lages in India’s most pop­u­lous state, Uttar Pradesh, diverged in their han­dling of the coro­n­avirus, they have been unit­ed in anoth­er way: a vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy that is preva­lent through­out India and threat­ens to pro­long the country’s cri­sis.

    The com­bi­na­tion of an uneven virus response — a reflec­tion of huge inequal­i­ty in resources and the vagaries of local atti­tudes — and a strug­gling vac­ci­na­tion cam­paign has left offi­cials warn­ing of a third wave of infec­tions when the sec­ond has at best only lev­eled off. Any sense of rapid relief like the one now pre­vail­ing in the Unit­ed States is unlike­ly any­time soon.

    Just 5 per­cent of India’s 1.4 bil­lion peo­ple are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, while about 20 per­cent have had a first dose. That gives the coun­try insuf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion against the high­ly con­ta­gious Delta vari­ant of the virus, which first sur­faced in India.

    At the same time, the coun­try con­tin­ues to report tens of thou­sands of new infec­tions and close to 1,000 deaths each day, num­bers that are almost cer­tain­ly an under­count­ing. Resigned talk of a third wave is indica­tive of how virus fatigue, and the cat­a­stroph­ic toll of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple in the last wave, have result­ed in a new def­i­n­i­tion of accept­able loss.

    “Last year, if you had told some­body that we have over 1,000 deaths a day — and the real num­ber might be five times that — they would have said that is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able,” said Ramanan Laxmi­narayan, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Dynam­ics, Eco­nom­ics and Pol­i­cy, a pub­lic health research orga­ni­za­tion based in Wash­ing­ton and New Del­hi. “This year, peo­ple are as if ‘It’s just 1,000 deaths a day. It’s fine. We can man­age with that.’”

    Dr. Laxmi­narayan said the vast unvac­ci­nat­ed pop­u­la­tion and the per­sis­tent cir­cu­la­tion of the virus meant there would still be flare-ups large and small.

    “It is not going any­where; it is going to be an endem­ic dis­ease that will stay with us,” he said. “The thing is — can we keep it at a low-lev­el inten­si­ty, rather than high inten­si­ty, with vac­ci­na­tions and oth­er mea­sures?”

    Vac­ci­nat­ing a pop­u­la­tion of more than one bil­lion was always going to be a daunt­ing task.

    India’s upper hand as the world’s largest vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­er was wast­ed because of mis­man­age­ment. After the first wave, the author­i­ties act­ed as if India had defeat­ed the virus for good, send­ing vac­cines abroad as part of its “vac­cine diplo­ma­cy.” In a move seen as an admis­sion of the prob­lems, Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi on Wednes­day replaced his health min­is­ter as part of a sweep­ing cab­i­net reshuf­fle.

    Now, as the gov­ern­ment final­ly seems to have some of the sup­ply issues sort­ed out, vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy is so wide­spread that Mr. Modi him­self has stepped in to address it.

    “I’ve myself been vac­ci­nat­ed with both dos­es,” he told one vil­lager who joined his month­ly radio call-in last week to report that peo­ple were afraid. “And my moth­er is close to a hun­dred years of age; she too has tak­en both dos­es.”

    In the coun­try­side, the aggres­sive vac­ci­na­tion push by a state machin­ery that is absent in oth­er times of need is seen by res­i­dents in a con­spir­a­to­r­i­al light. Urban elites ques­tion the vac­cines because of their rushed devel­op­ment and a lack of trans­paren­cy about a domes­ti­cal­ly devel­oped shot.

    Mis­in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly spread through What­sApp groups, has led some to believe that the vac­cines have side effects like steril­i­ty or mag­net­ism. Oppo­si­tion fig­ures try­ing to score polit­i­cal points against the gov­ern­ment have ampli­fied the con­cerns.

    In some cor­ners, cow dung, lemon juice, oils and herbs have been pro­mot­ed as reme­dies. Busi­ness-mind­ed reli­gious gurus have pushed their own prod­ucts as Covid cures, once even with help from Mr. Modi’s health min­is­ter. In a video clip, Baba Ramdev, a reli­gious entre­pre­neur, mocks mod­ern sci­ence and false­ly claims that 1,000 doc­tors have died after tak­ing the vac­cine.

    The three vil­lages in Uttar Pradesh reflect the prob­lem. A health offi­cial said that teams had set up vac­ci­na­tion clin­ics across the vil­lages with a dai­ly capac­i­ty of 100 to 200 dos­es. But each day, the sup­plies are bare­ly touched. The offi­cial read from the ledger for one of the vil­lages: 10 dos­es one day, five the next, two the day after.

    ...

    In the absence of blan­ket vac­ci­na­tions, Uttar Pradesh, like the rest of India, is left to hope that any third wave of infec­tions is not a repeat of the sec­ond.

    The state is run by a Modi pro­tégé, Yogi Adityanath, who is up for re-elec­tion next year. Crit­ics accuse him of play­ing down the dev­as­ta­tion, even as hos­pi­tal offi­cials cried out for oxy­gen and bod­ies sur­faced in the Ganges Riv­er.

    The cre­ma­to­ries on one stretch of the riv­er near Garh Muk­tesh­war, which includes the three adja­cent vil­lages, had an eight­fold increase in the num­ber of bod­ies from late April to ear­ly May, reach­ing 160 a day.

    Khilwai, the vil­lage that fared well, was spared in part because of hap­pen­stance. The sec­ond per­son to die was a rel­a­tive of the vil­lage chief. Her lever­age was used to pres­sure the dis­trict gov­ern­ment to set up the test­ing camps, one at her home and the oth­er at a tem­ple.

    While local elders count­ed more than 30 deaths in each of the oth­er two vil­lages, teams sent by the dis­trict health office to “sur­vey” the claims would offi­cial­ly reg­is­ter Covid-19 deaths only if there was a pos­i­tive test cer­tifi­cate. A col­umn list­ing the cause of oth­er deaths read: “Unknown fever. Unknown fever. Asth­ma. Chest infec­tion. Unknown fever.”

    “All the elders are gone,” said Ram Nath, a res­i­dent of one of the vil­lages, Janupu­ra. “But there was no test­ing. How do we know it was coro­na?”

    The health facil­i­ties across all three vil­lages were large­ly sim­i­lar. In Khilwai, the gov­ern­ment clin­ic amount­ed to one nurse in a swel­ter­ing room that has not had elec­tric­i­ty for near­ly a decade. In Janupu­ra, Dr. Rajen­dra Prasad’s pri­vate prac­tice was pret­ty much the last hope.

    ...

    ———-

    “One Vil­lage Quelled the Virus. The Next Was Over­run. It’s a Bad Sign for India.” by Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar; The New York Times; 07/11/2021

    “In some cor­ners, cow dung, lemon juice, oils and herbs have been pro­mot­ed as reme­dies. Busi­ness-mind­ed reli­gious gurus have pushed their own prod­ucts as Covid cures, once even with help from Mr. Modi’s health min­is­ter. In a video clip, Baba Ramdev, a reli­gious entre­pre­neur, mocks mod­ern sci­ence and false­ly claims that 1,000 doc­tors have died after tak­ing the vac­cine.

    Did you hear? 1,000 doc­tors died from from the COVID vac­cine. So says Baba Ramdev. That’s the kind of meme that has clear­ly suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en hold in Indi­an vil­lages if the trick­le of vac­ci­na­tions and over­whelmed cre­ma­tion cen­ters are any indi­ca­tion:

    ...
    The three vil­lages in Uttar Pradesh reflect the prob­lem. A health offi­cial said that teams had set up vac­ci­na­tion clin­ics across the vil­lages with a dai­ly capac­i­ty of 100 to 200 dos­es. But each day, the sup­plies are bare­ly touched. The offi­cial read from the ledger for one of the vil­lages: 10 dos­es one day, five the next, two the day after.

    ...

    The cre­ma­to­ries on one stretch of the riv­er near Garh Muk­tesh­war, which includes the three adja­cent vil­lages, had an eight­fold increase in the num­ber of bod­ies from late April to ear­ly May, reach­ing 160 a day.
    ...

    And then there are the deaths of vil­lage elders due to “Unknown fevers” and “Chest Infec­tions”. They aren’t con­sid­ered COVID deaths unless there’s a pos­i­tive test, and those tests aren’t hap­pen­ing. So it sounds like there’s a sit­u­a­tion unfold­ing in India where some­thing is killing large num­bers of vil­lage elders but the Modi gov­ern­ment isn’t con­firm­ing that COVID is the cul­prit. It’s all quite con­ve­nient for the virus and any­one who wants to see the old­er gen­er­a­tion of rur­al Indi­ans wiped out:

    ...
    While local elders count­ed more than 30 deaths in each of the oth­er two vil­lages, teams sent by the dis­trict health office to “sur­vey” the claims would offi­cial­ly reg­is­ter Covid-19 deaths only if there was a pos­i­tive test cer­tifi­cate. A col­umn list­ing the cause of oth­er deaths read: “Unknown fever. Unknown fever. Asth­ma. Chest infec­tion. Unknown fever.”

    “All the elders are gone,” said Ram Nath, a res­i­dent of one of the vil­lages, Janupu­ra. “But there was no test­ing. How do we know it was coro­na?”
    ...

    But Baba Ramdev it’s isn’t just spread­ing claims about doc­tors dying from the COVID vac­cine. He was sham­ing severe­ly ill COVID patients for need­ing oxy­gen. And blam­ing doc­tors for COVID and COVID deaths. Beyond that, his com­pa­ny Patan­jali Ayurve­da start­ed an herbal ‘cure’ for COVID last June. So the guy is encour­ag­ing peo­ple not to get vac­ci­nat­ed through lies, sell­ing ques­tion­able herbal ‘cures’, while chastis­ing those who get sick for need­ing oxy­gen and blam­ing doc­tors for the pan­dem­ic:

    BBC News

    Ramdev: Doc­tors furi­ous over yoga guru’s insult­ing Covid remark

    May 25, 2021

    Doc­tors in India have hit out against yoga guru Baba Ramdev over his con­tro­ver­sial state­ments against mod­ern med­i­cine.

    He recent­ly said that tens of thou­sands died of Covid after tak­ing mod­ern med­i­cines and mocked patients for try­ing to get oxy­gen cylin­ders.

    The guru with­drew his state­ment after the health min­is­ter crit­i­cised him.

    But he again took a swipe at mod­ern med­i­cine on Mon­day for not hav­ing a cure for some dis­eases.

    Mod­ern, sci­ence-based med­i­cine is the back­bone of Indi­a’s health­care sys­tems, but alter­na­tive ther­a­pies like ayurve­da and homoeopa­thy are also huge­ly pop­u­lar. Many gurus like Ramdev have launched suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es on the back of sell­ing herbal med­i­cines and prod­ucts.

    India also has a Min­istry of Ayurve­da, Yoga & Natur­opa­thy, Unani, Sid­dha and Homoeopa­thy (Ayush) to pro­mote tra­di­tion­al sys­tems.

    The Indi­an Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion (IMA), an organ­i­sa­tion that rep­re­sents doc­tors in India, has crit­i­cised the guru for his “insen­si­tive” remarks in the mid­dle of the pan­dem­ic.

    Doc­tors the BBC spoke to said such state­ments from a guru with mil­lions of fol­low­ers were “irre­spon­si­ble and demor­al­is­ing”.

    What is the con­tro­ver­sy?

    A video of Baba Ramdev mock­ing patients for try­ing to find oxy­gen went viral ear­li­er this month.

    It’s not clear when he made the state­ment, but he is heard mak­ing ref­er­ences to oxy­gen short­ages in sev­er­al cities in April and May.

    “God has giv­en us free oxy­gen, why don’t we breathe that? How can there be a short­age when God has filled the atmos­phere with oxy­gen? Fools are look­ing for oxy­gen cylin­ders. Just breathe the free oxy­gen. Why are you com­plain­ing about short­age of oxy­gen and beds and cre­ma­to­ri­ums?” he said.

    The state­ment drew sharp crit­i­cism from doc­tors and fam­i­lies of Covid patients who demand­ed an apol­o­gy.

    Baba Ramdev, Don’t Mock Those Gasp­ing for Oxy­gen, Show Some Com­pas­sion |... https://t.co/Xp7zFwpuEe via @YouTube#ArrestRamdev— Dr.Aninda Deb­nath (@aninda12987) May 22, 2021

    Two weeks lat­er, anoth­er video emerged in which he can be heard crit­i­cis­ing doc­tors and blam­ing Covid deaths on them.

    Many doc­tors took to Twit­ter to express their anger. Some even demand­ed his arrest.

    Such poi­so­nous com­ments by Baba Ramdev have hurt our sen­ti­ments. We are proud of our health work­ers and the Med­ical research team work­ing day in and day out to save our lives. Strict action should be tak­en against @yogrishiramdev#India_Against_Ramdev@NikhilHanda43— Dr Amarinder Singh Mal­hi MBBS/MD/DM@aiims_newdelhi (@drasmalhi) May 24, 2021

    Baba Ramdev is an excel­lent yoga teacher and prac­ti­tion­er. Yog is a way of life! He should stick to yoga. Please leave med­i­cine prac­tice to us.#COVIDE­mer­gency— Dr Pragya Shuk­la (@drpragya_shukla) May 24, 2021

    As pres­sure grew, Indi­a’s Health Min­is­ter Harsh Vard­han, who is also a doc­tor, issued a state­ment, ask­ing the guru to with­draw his remarks.

    ...

    On Sun­day, Baba Ramdev with­drew his con­tro­ver­sial state­ment in a tweet. But a day lat­er, he issued a let­ter ask­ing the IMA why mod­ern med­i­cine had no cure for 25 dis­eases, includ­ing dia­betes and hyper­ten­sion.

    This has again infu­ri­at­ed doc­tors. Promi­nent pul­mo­nolo­gist Dr A Fathahudeen, who has treat­ed thou­sands of Covid patients, told the BBC that such state­ments cause last­ing dam­age.

    “For more than a year, health­care work­ers like me have been in a war-like sit­u­a­tion. We have saved tens of thou­sand of lives. It’s real­ly unfor­tu­nate, insult­ing and hurt­ful to read such state­ments,” he said.

    Dr Fathahudeen added that mod­ern med­i­cine had evolved over the years with con­stant research and stud­ies. “We fol­low evi­dence-based prac­tice. At any giv­en time, thou­sands of researchers are work­ing to come up with cures. Look at the progress we have made in can­cer treat­ment. We have to con­stant­ly evolve and learn. It’s hard to trust any branch of med­i­cine that offers absolute cure for every dis­ease.”

    He also added that such state­ments cre­ate doubts in the mind of peo­ple when we need to have trust in med­i­cines and vac­cines in the mid­dle of a rag­ing pan­dem­ic.

    Who is Baba Ramdev?

    He shot to fame because of his tele­vised yoga class­es. Mil­lions fol­lowed him and he received praise across the world for pro­mot­ing yoga and healthy liv­ing.

    In 2006, he helped launch Patan­jali Ayurve­da to sell herbal med­i­cines and a few years lat­er, the busi­ness expand­ed to sell­ing almost every­thing, from flour, jeans, soaps, oils, bis­cuits and even cow urine from stores in even the remotest cor­ners of the coun­try. He was suc­cess­ful in trans­lat­ing his pop­u­lar­i­ty into build­ing a busi­ness empire.

    The expan­sion of his busi­ness also coin­cid­ed with the Hin­du nation­al­ist BJP com­ing to pow­er in 2014.

    Baba Ramdev has open­ly sup­port­ed both the BJP and Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and even cam­paigned for the par­ty.

    False Covid cure claims

    Patan­jali Ayurve­da launched Coro­nil — a com­bi­na­tion of herbs used in tra­di­tion­al Indi­an med­i­cine — in June last year and claimed that it could cure Covid.

    But mar­ket­ing of the prod­uct as Covid med­i­cine had to stop after the gov­ern­ment said there was no data to show it worked as a treat­ment. But it did­n’t ban Coro­nil, and said that it could be sold as an “immu­ni­ty boost­er”.

    Then in Feb­ru­ary, Patan­jali sup­port­ers claimed that Coro­nil had been approved by the WHO — prompt­ing it to issue a denial:

    .@WHO has not reviewed or cer­ti­fied the effec­tive­ness of any tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine for the treat­ment #COVID19.— WHO South-East Asia (@WHOSEARO) Feb­ru­ary 19, 2021

    Dr Vard­han was crit­i­cised for attend­ing an event with Baba Ramdev in Feb­ru­ary where claims about Coro­nil as a cure for Covid were repeat­ed.

    Coro­nil was also found sell­ing in some stores in the UK which led to the drug reg­u­la­tor there say­ing no such drug was autho­rised.

    In 2018, Baba Ramdev launched a mes­sag­ing app call­ing it “a home-grown rival to What­sApp”, but it was soon removed from app stores amid a furore over secu­ri­ty flaws.

    ————

    “Ramdev: Doc­tors furi­ous over yoga guru’s insult­ing Covid remark”; BBC News; 05/25/2021

    ““God has giv­en us free oxy­gen, why don’t we breathe that? How can there be a short­age when God has filled the atmos­phere with oxy­gen? Fools are look­ing for oxy­gen cylin­ders. Just breathe the free oxy­gen. Why are you com­plain­ing about short­age of oxy­gen and beds and cre­ma­to­ri­ums?” he said.”

    Only fools seek out oxy­gen for COVID. Why can’t peo­ple just breathe the free oxy­gen in the air? This is the advice the guy blam­ing the pan­dem­ic on doc­tors:

    ...
    Two weeks lat­er, anoth­er video emerged in which he can be heard crit­i­cis­ing doc­tors and blam­ing Covid deaths on them.

    ...

    On Sun­day, Baba Ramdev with­drew his con­tro­ver­sial state­ment in a tweet. But a day lat­er, he issued a let­ter ask­ing the IMA why mod­ern med­i­cine had no cure for 25 dis­eases, includ­ing dia­betes and hyper­ten­sion.
    ...

    And at the same time he’s attack­ing doc­tors for the pan­dem­ic he’s sell­ing herbal COVID ‘cures’. It’s quite a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy:

    ...
    Patan­jali Ayurve­da launched Coro­nil — a com­bi­na­tion of herbs used in tra­di­tion­al Indi­an med­i­cine — in June last year and claimed that it could cure Covid.

    But mar­ket­ing of the prod­uct as Covid med­i­cine had to stop after the gov­ern­ment said there was no data to show it worked as a treat­ment. But it did­n’t ban Coro­nil, and said that it could be sold as an “immu­ni­ty boost­er”.

    Then in Feb­ru­ary, Patan­jali sup­port­ers claimed that Coro­nil had been approved by the WHO — prompt­ing it to issue a denial:
    ...

    Dr Vard­han was crit­i­cised for attend­ing an event with Baba Ramdev in Feb­ru­ary where claims about Coro­nil as a cure for Covid were repeat­ed.

    Coro­nil was also found sell­ing in some stores in the UK which led to the drug reg­u­la­tor there say­ing no such drug was autho­rised.
    ...

    Final­ly, we can’t for­get that Baba Ramdev isn’t a ran­dom guru. He’s an influ­en­tial sup­port­er of Nuren­dra Modi and an open sup­port­er for the BJP:

    ...
    In 2006, he helped launch Patan­jali Ayurve­da to sell herbal med­i­cines and a few years lat­er, the busi­ness expand­ed to sell­ing almost every­thing, from flour, jeans, soaps, oils, bis­cuits and even cow urine from stores in even the remotest cor­ners of the coun­try. He was suc­cess­ful in trans­lat­ing his pop­u­lar­i­ty into build­ing a busi­ness empire.

    The expan­sion of his busi­ness also coin­cid­ed with the Hin­du nation­al­ist BJP com­ing to pow­er in 2014.

    Baba Ramdev has open­ly sup­port­ed both the BJP and Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi and even cam­paigned for the par­ty.
    ...

    How many of these dying vil­lage elders are tak­ing their COVID cues from Baba Ramdev? We don’t know, but we know the answer is far too many.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 28, 2021, 5:51 pm

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