Question: “How do you plan to treat the Mohammedans?” Savarkar: “As a minority, in the position of your Negroes.” Question: “And if the ...
Question: “How do you plan to treat the Mohammedans?”
Savarkar: “As a minority, in the position of your Negroes.”
Question: “And if the Mohammedans succeed in seceding and set up their own country?”
Savarkar: “As in your country…There will be civil war.”
– 1944 Interview with VD Savarkar by war correspondent Tom Treanor
As protests against the George Floyd killing gripped America in recent weeks, there was an outpouring of messages of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. One such message caught my particular attention for its brazenness: it was a post by the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh, the US arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, whose very raison d’être is hatred for India’s religious minorities.
I have no doubt that there are members of the HSS who genuinely wanted to reach out to Black America – a task that we Indian Americans as a whole have failed to pay much attention to until now. However, a message against anti-Black Racism coming from an organisation whose parent has normalised anti-Muslim bigotry in India, including mob lynchings, was a bit too much for me to stomach.
It made me wonder just how much American-born members of Hindu Nationalist organisations such as HSS, Hindu American Foundation and Hindu Students Council know about the ideological roots of their own organisations.
Do they not see the dichotomy between...
