Part One: Narendra Modi, And India's Weird Nazi Obsession

bar and the pirates. The bartender looks at the pirate and he's got like a steering wheel in his pants, and the bartenders like, hey, what do you well you got that steering wheel and your pants for? And the pirate responds, yard tis driving me nuts. That is the joke. Please enjoy the rest of this episode. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards podcast about Terrible People. Here with me, Sophia Alexandra. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.

Thanks for having me, Robert, Sophie, thank you. I did a musical intro for you, just doing mouth sounds. I noticed it and it was good, and he didn't like malfunctioned like a broken robot like you did last time when you tried to intro. So this is really a step up. I've I've decided to turn a new leaf professionally because I think it's important to be professional. So in the spirit of professionalism, do you want to play with the switch blade a stranger sent me in the mail? Yes,

please you try. I got a switch blade so every time I come back to l A, I get new fan packages and this one was just a switch blade. Um, so that's pretty fun. We've been carrying it around playing with it. Didn't know how to close it for a while, so it was just waving it around. Sophie is trying to figure out how to close it. Now it's a good time. Yeah, I'm excited to figure this puzzle out. Yeah, Chris Goddard like three seconds, Chris immediately, Chris our editor,

immediately figured out how to close it. The rest of us were in this particular early me shamefully couldn't figure it out. So I was just I was just waving an open knife around for a while, like a pinching situation, and just like we're good with oshow right, Sophie. Okay, Sophie says, everything I do is fine. So, Sophia, have

you heard about non Dram Moody? No? Oh boy, Well he's the Prime Minister of India, and you heard about how like a couple of couple three weeks ago, there was that umagram in uh New Delhi where like mobs of angry Hindu extremists were chasing Muslims through the street and killed dozens of them. Um. Not as familiar as I should be. Oh boy, Yeah that happened. Um, And we're going to talk about everything that led up to that happening. Um. So this is gonna be a fun one.

Fascism come. You know how sometimes countries are like functioning democracies for a long time and then a fascist gets in charge and you realize that, like, oh man, everybody was still way more racist than I gave him credit for. Shit. You know that happens in some countries. What do you mean? And where I don't can't relate to that at all. Yesterday we're talking about something that has only happened in India and nowhere else, and it's currently not ongoing, yes,

anywhere near or around US. I love talking about things that every single person listening to this podcast hasn't experienced in their own country. That's my favorite thing to talk about on this podcast. Good times. So yeah, hey, just quick question, how many dead babies in this episode? I just need to know how much to steal myself for this. There's like one paragraph we talk about a couple, but other than that, it's mostly the stution of murdered adults. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

it's pretty light on that. Okay, do you like me more or less now that you're only having me? Now that you're not e me on only dead children episodes? You know what it is, Sophia. I feel like I feel like you know when you when you when you get into a new relationship with somebody, like you stay with what's comfortable for a while, And so we stayed on the dead baby train for a little while because it made you feel safe. Could make me feel safe.

But now I'm willing to experiment with fascist foreign political leaders. Oh, you want to invite a fascist into our relationship? Yes, I do. There's always a point in every relationship where you invite a fascist strong man and you freaky, let's do this. That's why they keep winning, actually, because you just want to bring him in. You can't keep him out of your bedroom. You just like to dom and I appreciate that about you. Oh boy, this is gonna feel so much less comfortable after we get to all

the murdered people. I mean, that's why I'm really getting it in right now. So I'm gonna start by talking a little bit about Nazism in India. As you know, big fan, big fan of Nazism in India are really as a June nothing warms in my heart. So Nazism in India have a long, strange history that's really really difficult to talk about. As we discussed in our Savitri Devi episodes, the O G Nazis were obsessed with India as the homeland of the ancient Arians that they idolized.

Uh and the S S on an Airba, which was like the s S Archaeological Division, actually sent expeditions into Tibet and northern India to seek out the origins of their mythical superman. So like, how heartwarming that they had enough time to like follow this beautiful they really thread dial they were like murdering all across Europe. Is just so sweet that they were like you know what, let's

explore a little bit of some something mystical. Yeah, this was when they were sending this at was like kind of the slow murder period where they were like they hadn't because there weren't that many like Jewish people actually in Germany proper, so they really hadn't ramped up the killing yet and it were mostly doing weird ship and

murdering their political opponents and then pre crystall locked. No, but it's it's pre um invasion of Poland and stuff, so it's like it's like pre the start of actual hostilities. So they they're they're definitely killing a lot of people, but like by Nazis Anderds, they haven't really got into Yeah. Yeah, let's have a little bit of archaeology with our our murder appetizers, just like a like a slow ramp up. Yeah yeah, Like I'm not gonna make an edge in

comment here. Um. So, while the ideological underpinnings of Nazism did not get really any purchase in the Indian subcontinent during the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, many Indians on Nazi Germany as a potential ally in their battle against British imperialism. So one of the tough things to understand.

And this is also true a different kind of extent with like Ukraine is UM, there was a number of folks in India who supported the Nazis during the period with the Nazis were in charge not because they cared about Nazism, but because they hated the British Empire, which is like, yeah, okay, I mean everybody hates the British Empire. Yeah.

And if you're like a Hindu nationalist or an Indian nationalist and like a reasonable person like nineteen thirty, you know, you can look at the Nazis be like, well, I'm sure they've done bad stuff, but like, let's look at what the British Empire has been doing, right, Like, I think that's a long history, have been terrible, a lot more reason to be concerned. Um. So that's part of the support here, and that aspect of it, the part where it's like kind of understandable. Support of the Nazis.

UM reached its height with the Indish Legion or the Indian Volunteer Legion of the wathan SS. This was an all Indian military force aimed formed at the guidance of Indian nationalist leaders Subhas Chandra Bos. The forces were initially formed out of Indian POWs captured fighting against the forces

of the British Empire. So like they would beat a British army and they would capture a bunch of Indian soldiers that the British had taken in and then they would be like, you guys want to like invade India and free it from British domination. And these guys were like, yeah, of course that sounds good. You guys want to build

us no, yah, yeah, it was a little bit like that. Um. So the idea was that like these Indian soldiers would act as pathfinders and like helped lead the German army into India when it was time to invade the subcontinent uh and Germany wound up collecting well over ten thousand Indian soldiers that way, So they were like ten thousand Indian, Hindu and Muslim Indian soldiers in the s s. Most people don't know this story. It's so wild, it's really weird.

They were eventually stationed in France just in time for the Normandy landings, and they never wound up taking part in much meaningful combat, but a lot of them did get killed by the French resistance. Like it's this really weird story. There are not confused. You'd be when like an S S officer came to take you away and he was Indian, and you'd be like, well, they didn't do that really, like they weren't doing normal SS stuff like they even had in there you have to take

people away. No, they're not really person I don't think they knew what it was. I think they were like, you guys hate the English and we hate us some English again, Like that's a horrible mistake. Yeah, yeah, it's

an it's a real comedy of errors. You could get a yeah, um, and it's it's weird because like there's like photos of Irwin Rommel like reviewing parades of these guys and you can see like fucking Rommel um like like pinning medals on the chest of guys with turbans, and like it's just this, it's it's a very strange

chapter of history. Um. But they did have like a clause in their contract that said they would not be used for offensive operations anywhere but India, So like they did kind of have written into their contract we're not like fully on board with the Nazi thing, so I wouldn't call I don't know, like it's weird. It's cool to other have other people have who have joined like armed things, gotten a chance to be like, you know what this but not this, I don't like all the

way up to the killing, but not the killing. You don't get to do that, right, Yeah, this is the only time I've heard about something like this happening. Yeah, it seems unusual. It's a weird case from the war. And you can imagine if that's what soldiering really was. You sign up, but you get to say no things.

That's actually that's actually how the German army were today. There, as far as I know, the only one where if you are a German soldier you have a right written into like the law of the nation that says that if you have a moral issue with a deployment or something, you get to say no. I wonder why that's there, yea, I wonder why they have that rule. Um. So, after the war, India gained her independence on the back of

a fundamentally peaceful movement. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the chief architects of independence, was assassinated though by a member of the r s S, a Hindu nationalist political party with ties to Savitri Devi, the birth mother of esoteric Hitlerism, who we talked about a few weeks ago. India and Pakistan split apart to in large part to fears by Indian Muslims that they would be dominated by Hindus in

any democratic system. This mass migration resulted in what some have termed a mutual genocide, killing well over a million people, possibly like as much as three million people. It was a horrific, horrific like the split of Indian Pakistan, which is unbelievably violent, and it's one of those things where like you'd be really hard pressed to like lockdown like

a side that was like mutual. I've never heard again the term mutual was just in the mutual genocide is an insane name and also the name of my death metal band. Yeah, it is a good name for a metal band. Yeah, And it's this is all a very complicated history, but there so you can see there's like this huge tension between so India is simultaneously has more Muslims than any other country on Earth, but is also the vast majority of people in it or Hindu um.

And this has been a problem for a while in terms of like um violent uh differences between the two groups, in part because like at different points one group or another has like ruled the nation and the other people, particularly for a long time the like there was like a Muslim conquest of India and the Mogal's ruled and it was like, so this is like there's a lot of history here that we're not going to get to

cover in enough depth. But the fact that like the partitioning of Indian Pakistan goes as violently as it does um uh says something about the state of affairs at the time, and it's it's worth noting that like a lot of that also goes on the British because there were ways to have handled this that we're smarter and and more understanding and would have resulted in less death. But England was just like fuck it, We'll just here. We drew a map like this seems good to us.

You guys, figure out how to implement it, um, But we already drew the map. We can't change it just because people are dying. The map is already drawn. Yeah, and it's probably worth noting that it's unlikely any of this would be happening if the British hadn't ruled India for a couple of hundred years. But Anderson gets angry when I talked about the British Empire's She's dressed in a really smart like British tweed right now. She likes Royals and she does not funk around when she's dressed

to the nines. Is Royals, the show about the British Royal family. Can I get the word tree? Is that the one everyone's watching anyway? So um. In the decades since the partitioning of India, the nation of India lurched forward to take its place as the planet's largest democracy. Elections and crises came and went, and India took its place again as an independent power on the world stage.

Americans grew increasingly obsessed with the subcontinent as a source of ancient wisdom and as a great vacation destination, and at the same time Indians grew well, can I tell you something, nothing has changed? Look at any white girls Instagram.

It's pretty cool. One of the neat things about going to India, particularly to New Delhi, is how many uh, like young American like nineteen and twenty year olds you meet there having like massive existential crises because New Delhi is a hard fucking city to land in, like it is,

it is a shock. There's so many more people than you'd expect, it moves so fast, it is so polluted, um and so like like like people just have massive panic attacks and there's like this whole industry based on Like you see some rich, panicking kid who like didn't realize what it was really going to be like to be in a city like that, and you like come up to him and be like, you want to get out of Delhi, right, you want to visit like one of these vacations spots And he's like yeah, and they're

like all of the trains are shut down, there's no busses leaving the town. But I got a bus that you can sharter And then like they've paid three thousand dollars to rent a bus for a week. Oh my god, what a sweet fucking hustle. It's it's pretty fun to watch. I'm learning so much. Yeah. So at the same time as all of this happened, uh, Indian or a number of people in India grew increasingly obsessed with the theories and iconography of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement, and

the reason behind this was complex and confusing. It ranges widely from more or less harmless stuff, like the term Hitler has become a common Bollywood insult for characters who act badly, like you know, you're yeah, like like like just sort of being a total Hitler right now. Yeah, that's so awesome. We should do this, we should do

that one more. Um But it it kind of hints at something, which is that like Hitler and the legacy of the Nazis isn't really seen kind of the same way over there as it is here because it's way more distant, right, Like all of that those politics are

more distant to people there. So it's kind of like you get some weird examples of um, like, every couple of years, there'll be a story of just like some shop opening up in Delhi or some other city in India that's like at a huge swastika on the front or like a picture of Hitler, and it's like usually when you read articles interviewing the shop owner, he's like, well, I didn't really know anything about him. I just thought like the imagery was cool. It's like it's very strange.

Um so uh crossword and Indian bookseller sold twenty five copies of mind comp in three years. Jaco, another Indian book merchant, sold a hundred thousand copies in seven years. Hitler's Manifesto was translated into Gujarati Hindi Uh malayal Malay Alan Malay all Um jesus, I'm so sorry to all of the people of Southeast um Asia that I'm gonna be butchering words from um Bengali and to mill And it's sold solidly across the subcontinents. So you have to way hear about da Vinci code man we had in

the nights templar. We don't want that going over there. Um. Yeah. So you have this weird thing where like there's this mix of the history of nazism't being less immediate in India and so like people you know, like adopt the term Hitler as a general insult. And but also this weird phenomenon of like Hitler's actual words selling very well in chunks of India. And what makes this unsettling is that the book is not being sold there as a

historic text instead. Mine comp has achieved popularity in India is a sort of self help book, a guide to success for Hindu businessman. It's not great. What the fuck? Yeah? A guide to success. Yeah, he's like they're Tim Ferris, you know, not they're Tim Fair, but like a subculture within like the the Hindu business community. He's like a Tim Ferris tie figure, like a great product productivity. Uh, Guru, like set a timer for thirty minutes and then when

it goes off, you kill all the Jews. I found a CBS news article that interviewed to Ruin Sinkhole, a management student at New Delhi's Institute of Technology, was like, without the final solution, I would have never passed my marketing laws. We need a final solution to get in these products off the shelves. I'll tell you what. Uh. He read Mind so this guy to run red mind comp as an undergraduate, and he found it inspiring and he told CBS quote, it serves as a reminder that

nothing is unachievable. He said, it doesn't matter how many millions of people you dream of killing from, how many different kinds of groups you got this. You want to kill three, you want to kill six? You want to kill eleven? You got this after that point. This does them back to my frequent refrain on this show that like, people should not, as often as they are, be encouraged to follow their dreams. Some people's dreams are garbage. Yeah,

people's dreams not good. So yeah, he said, it serves as a reminder that nothing is unachievable, and he added that He added that he was able to separate that message of empowerment from the book's pervasive anti Semitic ideology. So you gotta cut out all the jew hatred. But there's some good stuff. The old I read Playboy for

the articles defends I read Hitler for the management advice exactly. Yeah, what are you talking about, mind com Yeah, I mean, sure, there's some juice stuff in there, but mostly what I thought about was efficiency. Mostly it taught me how to really set up an organization. Yeah, it taught me management skills, how to talk to people before you killed them, obviously, but you know it was very helpful, and you know,

in luring people to their deaths, it really helped. It's wild because, like, if you actually look into how the Third Reich was managed, it was a complete ship show and Hitler was terrible at it and the only reason they had as much military success as they did is decades of primarily Prussian military ingenuity. That like, but it like he wasn't good as a manager. Is this is the core of the point. But I guess people miss that.

Um So. In two thousand ten, Bollywood director Nolan Sing announced his plan to produce a movie titled Dear Friend Hitler, um which was shall we say, a different take at all? I mean, I guess I don't need to register my script with a w G anymore. That's clearly someone's taken my idea. That's a bummer Hitler colin not so bad, I do. That was also another version of I mean that was a musical, But I have an idea for a script that I yeah, you want to just throw

it out here, nobody steal this. It's called Reverse Hitler, the Hitler with a Heart of Gold, and it's about a clone of Hitler, that's his opposite, whose goal is to and it can either be I actually think this might work best as like a Netflix mini series. His goal is to get six million Jewish couples pregnant. Oh my god, how about anti Hitler Anti Hitler. We can workshop the title. Yeah, and you know what else, we can stay on board with this. Let's make this happen.

I don't I don't want this to slip away. Okay, no, we can make some bank off of this, dude, anti Hitler Hunters is popular and that ship is trash. It is. It's bad. It's really terrible, so bad. It's like, what horrible. It's like written by people who I think had heard of Jewish people but aren't. And I know the guy involved as Jewish and the guys starring in it as Jewish, but I don't understand it. Why are they calling the grandparents soft? That's a that's a Hebrew word. That would

never be the thing. It would be Yiddish. It just doesn't make any sense. It's like, just have one fucking real jew look it over, just one, just one. It's so bad, horrible, What about the fucking accent on the grandma? Sorry, no, no, it's good, it's good. This is a terrible show. But you know what's not terrible and also haunts Nazis? These exactly exactly, every single one of them nailed it. We're back.

We're back, and we're talking about Nazism in India. So into this inten this Bollywood director Nolan Saying announces that he's going to make Dear Friend Hitler, and CBS News reports that he was quote genuinely shocked that this created controversy, genuinely shocked, the media express disdain, Jewish groups were horrified, and his lead actor through it, though a bit baffled

by the reaction, quit. While such a response would seem if anything understated in much of the world, Singh had reason to believe his film would not generate even a ripple of scandal in India. Here, Hitler is not viewed as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of morally ambiguous fascination. He has seen as a managed meant guru akin to Makia Eli or Sun Sue by business students, and an object of wonder by people craving order amidst

the chaos of India. Imagine if fifty Cent did his own version of mind Coom instead of Yeah, that would be a bummer. I feel like Kanye maybe new Kanye, new Kanye. So uh that last line there about people craving order amid the chaos of India that brings us to like the real problem because while many of the Indians who created weird like Hitler themed restaurants, some clothing stores did so because they thought the imagery was neat and they just didn't know that much about the Second

World War. There were a number of people who knew precisely what Hitler stood for, and some of them took deliberately took advantage of their countryman's ignorance of the Third Reich to whitewash Hitler and mainstream fascist politics. I'm sorry, whitewash Hitler. Yeah, it's pretty funny, Is that even possible?

Kind of I found a really interesting article in Herrott's left leaning Israeli news website and it documents this was called a Hitler's Hindu's Nazi Living Nationalists on the Rise, and it starts with the author's recollection of their time in a cycling expedition through India in July two thousand eight. They found themselves in Nagpur, a city in the exact middle of India and one of the hotbeds of the

Hindu nationalist movement. And Nagpur they found a pool parlor named Hitler's Den, complete with this of a definitely st Nazi swastika on the sign. Um. I mean obviously, what are you going to take pictures in front of? Yeah, I mean Hitler's dead. Of course we all need a Hitler's Den shot. So Hitler's Den was not just the

result of good natured ignorance about European history. For you see, Naper happens to hold the headquarters of an organization called the rush Tria swam Boy swam Sevak Song or r s S. It's a far right Hindu fascist political organization originally founded back in the nineteen twenties. And this is the group that like the guy who shot Gandhi was a former member of the r s S. So the cool dudes, one of the co founders or ideological founders or whatever of the r s S is of fellow

named Vid Savarkar. And Vid Savarkar had a brother who was a big fan of the Nazi priestess Savitri Devi, and like wrote a forward in one of her books. And VD Savarkar himself was a big fan of our old buddy Adolph. In nineteen forty, he addressed a group of Hindu nationalists by saying, there is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi. Nazi has improved undeniably. The Savior of India passes off as he passes off as

a Hindu extremist. VD Savarkar's primary motivation was a desire to see India turned into a Hindu stand that the term here at the time, a nation completely dominated by Hinduism and Muslims in particular, completely purged and exercise from society. At that same gathering, he stated, if we Hindus an India grow stronger in time, these Muslim friends of the league type will have to play the part of the

German Jews instead. Yeah. Yeah, not a nice guy and Vid Savarkar coined the term Hindutva for his new ideology. He argued that ancient Arians who had settled in India formed a Hindu nation. Hindu nous stemmed from geographical unity, racial unity and a common culture which pitted the Hindus of India against all others. And there was like a cast angle to it too. He was like a Brahmin and I think in his view of it, and it's

become sort of more egalitarian. Fascism in the modern era but like initially there was like a very strict like racial hierarchy within Hinduism too. I think that's less of a factor now, but I'm not an expert on it um. Another early RSS leader, Ms. Goldwal Car, was nicknamed the Guru of Hate. He was another big Hitler fan. In his nineteen thirty nine book We Are Nationhood, defined a seminal RSS text, he wrote this, something amazing about being

the Guru of Hate. It's like it's like any pepitone's the bit or Buddha, you know. I mean, not suggesting he's a Nazi. He's a very funny non Nazi comedian. Yeah, not a Nazi, just repeating. Probably not a Nazi. Probably, so he said this in his book German Race pride has now become topic of the day 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. A good lesson for us in hindu stand

to learn and profit by. So it's so cool that when my grandpa's, i mean my grandma's family was all shot to death, it was like a really good lesson for it was a really good lesson it. It goes to show kind of this thing that I don't think it's talked about enough, which is like fascism functions very similarly to a cancer and World War two can be seen as a really aggressive dose of chemo. But we didn't fucking get at all. And that's why this is all happening all over the world right now. Is these

little bitty like pockets of it. It's not possible to get at all. I maybe it is. Maybe I think there's an argument to be made about the nature of our society and that and this will come into play later here, and that if you live in a system that is is completely dominated by by capitalism and moneyed interests as ours is, because that's always a factor in the rise of all these movements, is the business leaders in those countries, even the ones that don't really like

the Fascist party, prefer it to socialism. And that's a huge factor everywhere fascism seriously takes hold. It's just like these rich people being like, well, I guess I prefer these folks to giving up a big chunk on my fortune. And so there's an argument to be made that if you have a state with a strong social safety net already in place, and with strict limits on how much power the wealthy can exercise, it's seriously cramps the ability

of these movements to get off the ground. Um, nobody's ever eradicated fascism from the human race, So we can't know what the solution is. But if i'm if I'm theorizing, that would be a suggestion I would make, I'll take it under advisement. Yeah, the next time you're trying to eliminate fascism, maybe give that a shot. Not all the way in, but I'll think about it. Well, it's all on you specifically, so I hope you do. But yeah, as you know, people have been waiting for me to

eliminate FACI. Yeah, we're all waiting. So. Another one of the founders of the RSS was a guy named hedge War, and he deliberately patterned the RSS after the fascist parties he'd watched rise to power in Germany and Italy. Hedgewar addressed his stormtroopers and khaki uniforms patterned off Mussolini's fascists.

He marched them through the street and an Indian equivalent to the goose step, and he gave them like a weird little salute that's like kind of like a modified Hitler salute that they still do to this day, modified in which way. Um, if you look up r SS, well it's like a little bit less of the hand motion. Um, just like less noticeable. What do you want me to look at r SS salute? Yeah? Yeah, it's like it's like your arm kind of like over your with like

your fist over your heart. You can sort of see the inspiration, but it kind of looks if you do this, it's like almost Hitler. Yeah, it's a little bit of a of a subdued Do you have to keep your arms straight though? Yeah? I think you have to keep it draka. You know that has a very Hitler look. It's got a hitlery look to it. Yeah. And Hedgewar's fundamental belief was that centuries of domination by the British Empire had emasculated the Indian man and they needed a violent,

fascist paramilitary force to restore their manly pride. So I noticed you picked up the knife just sort of by reflex. That's a good reflex to fascism. Um. So the RSS was from the beginning profoundly anti Muslim. They preached that India's Muslims were descended from Hindus who had been violently converted, and thus we're not authentically Indian. Non violence and plurality were all equally hateful to the men of the RSS, including one Naam van Ayak Gudzi, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.

After Gandhi's murder, the party was banned, but not for long. The centrist powers of Indian never quite succeeded in wiping it out, and as a result, it hung out in the margins of political society for years, waiting for the right time to re emerge. Bit by bit, it grew to hold influence over ever greater swaths of Indian society.

In two thousand and four, the Gujarat State Bore issued textbooks that described Adolf Hitler as a hero, with social study textbook chapter titles like Hitler, the Supremo and Internal Achievements of Nazism One Secure Supremo. What a bad breakfast sandwich? Yeah, that does sound like a terrible It's like a lot of hair and it just mustaches. Yeah, it's mostly like really greasy pork and like boiled eggs. Yeah, greasy pork and boiled eggs. Is the supremo Hitler. Yeah, yeah, the

mustaches and let us. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I'd prefer it to subway, but not by much. And it's less fascist than subway, but not by much. Subway. If you sponsor our show, I'll take all this back and we will eat fresh seriously. So yeah. From that social study textbook, there's a section called Ideology of Nazism, and in that chapter it notes quote Hitler lit dignity and

prestige to the German government. He adopted the polity of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race. So you can kind to see something happening here. Yeah. Sympathizers in the state of Tamil Nadu succeeded in sliding pro Nazi messages into a tenth grade social studies textbook in two thousand eleven, including chapters praising Hitler's inspiring leadership achievements and how the Nazis only ordered the persecution of the Jews in order to maintain a

German race with Nordic elements. Nordic elements, so that's good. In two twelve tenth grade students at a private school in Mumbai were asked to complete a sentence starting with the words I admire. Nine of the students in that class picked Hitler. A two two pole conducted by the Times of India found that seventeen percent of respondents listed

Hitler as the kind of leader India ought to have. So, given all that, it would be fair to say that India's issues with Nazism go just a scouche behind simple ignorance of history. It would, in fact be fair to say that a number of very motivated people have spent decades attempting to mainstream Nazi idology and pushed the ideals of fascism on the people of the world's largest democracy. And it would furthermore be fair to say that those

same very motivated people have seen terrifying success. No individual has seen more success with this than Narindra Moody, the current Prime Minister of India and the man who was governor of Gurot in two thousand four when the province added that pro Hitler curriculum to X textbooks. So we're gonna talk about Moody now. Now now we're into the past. NiFe, good that's the right response. Oh look, he let me call it my knife. What's up now, my knife? I'm

kindly stroking my knife. Is the coolest ever all day. Yeah, let's let's get a couple of knives. More knives in here. Sophie Narendra Modi was born in Vanegar, a small town in North guj rots Mansana district, on September seventeenth, nineteen fifty. He was the sixth of the third of six children, and he was not born into wealcare privilege. His family was of the Ganchi cast, which put them about as low on the cultural totem pole as one could go

without literally being an outcast. Traditionally, members of this cast pressed vegetable oil for a living, but Narindra's father supported his family by running a small chi shop at a local railway station. The Moody family were incredibly poor and lived together in a forty by twelve foot single story house. When Narindraw was old enough, he worked at his father's

tea shop to help support the family. He would get up early to work alongside his dad and then cross the train tracks to head to school later in the morning. The modern political propaganda around Moody often emphasizes the fact that he is unmarried and chased, essentially portraying him as something of a monk dedicated purely to his work on behalf of India, a man who sacrificed even love for the love of his country. As we know, being chased

doesn't always work up. Actually, it can be a real problem. Maybe some people. Yeah, people should just suck maybe um. But this whole like presenting himself as like a chased monk, it does kind of keeps with a broad trended propaganda around mode. For example, this is how his website Narindra Moody dot Ian describes his childhood. As a child, Narindra Moody balance to studies, non academic life and his contribution

to the family tea stall. His schoolmates were calling a Reindra as a diligent student with a penchant for debating and reading. He would spend hours and hours reading in the school library. Among the sports, he was very fond of swimming. Nourindramodi had a wide range of friends from all the communities. As a child, he often celebrated both Hindu and Muslim festivals. Considering the large number of Muslim

friends he had in the neighborhood. Yet his thoughts and his dreams went way beyond a conventional life that began in the classroom and ended in the environs of an office. He wanted to go out there and make a difference to society, to wipe tears and suffering among people. At a young age, he developed an inclination towards renunciation and asceticism.

He gave up eating salt, chili's oil, and jaggery. So that's kind of how he's portrayed in his official propaganda, right, So they also he hit tons of Hindu or Muslim friends. He's not racist, and so dude, if your God doesn't want you to eat chili's, abandon your God. It's not that because like obviously chilies are like a traditional Hindu food. It's this idea that like, um, that they are better than people because you don't need chilies, that because you

sacrifice comforts of the flesh, you're a holy man. Like that's kind of what make and that's not just Hinduism. That's like a huge and Christianity and Islam. Like this idea of what I'm saying, if you're not fucking at least have chilies. If you're not fucking at least have chilies. You don't have hot sauce. What do you even have that's a T shirt? You're not fucking you have some chilies. Yeah, you gotta anyway chilies or fucking ideally both to avoid fascism. Yeah.

Uh so. It was, however, revealed during his first campaign for Prime minister that Narendra was legally married and had been virtually his entire life. Uh, he was like married as a child. The couple actually moved in together at the age of seventeen, but the only cohabited for three months. The Narendra abandoned his wife to wander around him Alayan mountains on a pilgrimage and he never returned to death draws part just kidding, No, until I wander away forever.

It's it's a little bit weirder than that because I can't put this on Narendra because he didn't get to choose to marry his wife. It was like, um his family because his family was very traditional UM and they thought that like they should um do kind of the traditional thing for people in their culture, which was like

you marry off the kid pretty young. Like it was an arranged marriage sort of thing, and so like this partner was picked for him when he was three or four and they were just like engaged to be married. And then at seventeen, they moved in together and he kind of immediately knew, like, I don't want this life,

and so he left. And I can't really put I mean, I can put the whole becoming like a fascist on him, but deciding that you don't want to marry this person your parents hooked you up with when you were like four, that that can't be on him. How did his wife feel though? I don't know. Yeah, but that's I mean, I can't blame him for like not wanting to be married when he didn't choose to get married. I'm sure she didn't want it either, but she was just trying

to play along for a second. And I don't know what happened to her. I don't know that anybody does. Okay, good, we should research that. That would be X time to know. Yeah. So anyway, what I'm getting out is that, like, this guy's backstory is a little bit complicated, and we don't have like a really clear idea of how he spent his youth or his childhood. We have a lot of propaganda in a few bits of like hard facts that are sprinkled in here and there. Um yeah, so it's

it's weird, um or not weird. It's just it's not what we're used to. And it's hard to like, like a lot of this is hard to kind of square with the way things are in the US. Like here in the US, like politicians are supposed to be like family men and like to the point where like our current president literally bragged about his dick size during a

major political debate. And it's kind of hard as an American to get your head around somebody bragging that, like I don't fuck, I have no partner, and like I don't bone at all. But no, I get that it makes you folier than other people exactly. Yeah, and in it kind of positions to come, yeah, I don't, I don't for me coming as politics and that's it's just different. Um. So. Nourendra's childhood coincided with an interesting time in Indian politics.

The Congress Party, the party of Gandhi, basically held power

for the first fifty years of his life. They stood for a sec for secular democratic values and were directly opposed to the R s S. As you might expect from a violent fascist movement, The R excess was initially RSS was initially a high cast endeavor organized by wealthy men, but in order to expand their membership base after the partition of India, the RSS quickly found itself recruiting new members of lower casts, and one of those recruits was

a young boy named Narendra Modi. It's hard to say when he first got involved with the R S S. I've heard some sources that claim he was eight or nine years old when they when they went with him. That's real fucking early. Yeah. His official biographies don't agree with this, and they state that he was like after he went on pilgrimage to the Himalayas, that he came back and he joined the RSS. We don't know, um.

The official biographies talk about I don't know, you know, stuff like we when he was nine years old, there was flooding in a river and he built a food stall to donate the proceeds to relief work um. And that during a war with Pakistan and his youth he engaged in acts of charity, serving tea to soldiers passing through the railway station. That's what they focused on the official biography, that he's like this very patriotic kid who dedicates a lot of his time and effort to helping

his fellow hindus um. And it's entirely possible that if he did any of this stuff, it was actually at the behest of the RSS, and he was doing it as like a child activist. I really don't know. It's kind of impossible to tell whatever the precise truth. We know that at age seventeen, Narindra abandoned his wife and

left on a pilgrimage of spiritual enlightenment. When he came back, he set up a tea card at a bus stand to make ends meet and began working for the RSS in a in an official capacity as a procharek, which was essentially a street propagandist. So the holler at his wife when he got back, I don't think so. I don't think they saw each other again. He has come by and say like, hey, it's gonna be weird. I'm

selling tea in town. I'm back. You know, I'm sorry, I'm kind of a dick, but probably you don't want to be with me anyway. So this is for the best. But if you see me in town slinging t to the Nazis, don't don't feel weird about it. Don't make it weird. I have to say, I've never fucked, so this is critical for me. So it may not have he he might be completely honest about the whole chasteness thing. Like well, it's kind of hard to tell because it's hard to get like a real hint of what the

man is. But he might actually be like a no nuts sort of dude, like like really committed to that proud boy don't come sort of sort of thing fascist

hate coming. I know it's so so um. Yeah. He starts work as a protarch, which is basically like a street propagandist, like he's giving speeches and stuff to try to like rile people up and get them involved in this nationalist movement and really teaches him how to like stir up a crowd and work one Um and Paris Moody were expected to remain chased, living like monks and

dedicating their every waking hour to the party. So when Moody was not delivering speeches and spreading the RSS gospel of intolerance against non Hindu's he cleaned out the living quarters of senior RSS officials. In interviews today, Moody claims that finding the RSS basically saved his life. Quote, I got the inspiration to live for the nation from the RSS. I learned to live for others and not for myself.

I owe it all to the r s S. So fascist parties like the RSS de facto idolized the military, and leaders in such organizations either have to have a military background of their own or like as we saw with people like Hitler and Mussolini, or they need to come up with a very good excuse as to why they did not serve that still reinforces their bona fides as like a lover of the military. I was busy, not fucking. I was busy to not to the military.

You got the military. Um. We kind of see this with Trump's bones spurs and in his bizarre insistence that the time he spent in the military school was essentially the same as being in the military. You've got to find a way to like kind of connect yourself to the military if you're going to be this sort of authoritarian strong man. And Moody never served, but his biography really tries to thread that needle, and I'm gonna quote from it right now. As a child, Narendra Moody had

one dream to serve in the Indian Army. For many youngsters of his time, the army was seen as the ultimate means of serving Mother India. As luck would have it, his family was dead opposed to the idea. Nourindra Moody was very keen to study in Sinic School located a near by jem Nagar, but when the time came to pay the feest, there was no money at home. Surely, Narindra was disappointed, But fate had different plans for this young boy who was disappointed on not being able to

wear the uniform of a Jawana soldier. Over the years, he embarked on a unique path that took him across India in pursuit of the larger mission to serve humanity. So he wanted to be a soldier, but like, they couldn't make the funding workout and stuff, and thankfully he found another way to serve. That's just like being a soldier, but doesn't risk him getting shot in a border war with Pakistan. So that's cool. So just like though, just

like that it's the same. It's the same, only he doesn't die anonymously in a trench being ordered to charge a machine Gunness, that is very same. It is the same, exactly the same, but very fortunate for him. So in nineteen seventy five, when Moody was twenty five years old, India went through a period of economic collapse in the attendant civil and rest that comes with it. The RSS saw this as an opportunity to recruit and to stir

up dissent against the ruling Congress Party. Prime Minister in Dera Gandhi responded to all this by suspending parliament and instituting emergency rule, a widely unpopular and a legal move that was rightly condemned by many. During her time as de facto dictator, Indira Gandhi had RSS leaders arrested and persecuted, and the organization itself was banned. Moody went into hiding at this time, dressing as a seek in a turban

and what appears to be a fake beard. I've got a picture of him in disguise, and I'm almost certain that that's a costume piece he's wearing. Let me see the beard. Look at that it's a little line on there that makes it look like it's a fake wed or he's just like got like a thick version of a chin strap. Going. Yeah, I can't really say for certain if it is a fake beard or not, but it's the only question that it's a wild choice either way. I think the mustaches, you can see the tape. Yeah,

it's weird. It's a weird look. Sunglasses help, Yeah, they do help. I mean it's not a bad he just couldn't grow a beard or he has one now I think so, like what the dude, I mean, he was younger then some minute, takes a while before it comes time. Yeah, I'll accept that. So. Indira Gandhi's period of emergency rule eventually ended and the RSS was unbanned, and rather than being harmed by their period of persecution, Gandhi's targeting of the group legitimized in the eyes of many Indians who

had not identified with the organization previously. The RSS began to grow and the loyal and Narindric Moody moved up the ranks quickly. In nine seven, he joined the Janata Party or b j P, and the b j P is the electorally political also a member of the b j P. What's up, dude. That is sorry, yeah, but it's the In this case, the b j P is the electorally political wing of the RSS. You don't got to tell me about the b j Robert's uncomfortable. It's great,

you can all join blushed the JP. That is so cute. Lord in Heaven, you're adorable. You know what else is adorable and pro blow job. That's that's exactly right. All of these companies will blow you in the capitalistic sense by sending you products in exchange for currency. We're back. So uh. Moody has just joined the b j P UM, which is the political wing of the RSS. And he started at the bottom of the party, but his skill

as an organizer ensured that he rose rapidly. By the nineteen eighties, he had become a senior figure in the b JPS Gugati chapter. At the time, the b j P was still definitely fringe. It had only two seats in parliament. The party leadership looked out at the political situation in India and saw that they needed a cause to crystallize the divisions between Hindu and Muslim in the country, and they found this cause in the city of Iodia.

That holy city had a mosque called the Babri Mashid mas Jid sorry the Babri Musjid, which had been built by the Muslim Mughal and bur Baber in fifty eight for a variety of confusing reasons. A number of local Hindus had grown convinced over the years that this mosque was built over the site of an old Hindu temple, and some of these people began to claim that ram and Avatara Vishnu had been born on the spot. And I'm going to quote now from a New Yorker article

laying out what happened next. In September nine, senior b JP member named L. K. Advani began calling for the Babri Musjid to be destroyed and for a Hindu temple to take its place. To build support for the idea, he undertook a two month pilgrimage called the ram rath Yatra across the Indian heartland. Traveling aboard a Nissan jiep refitted to look like a chariot, he sometimes gave several speeches a day in flaming crowds about what he saw

as the government's favoritism towards Muslims. Sectarian riots followed in his wake, leaving hundreds dead. At Vani was arrested before he reached Iodia, but other b JP members carried on gathering supporters and donations along the way. On December six, a crowd led by RSS partisans swarmed the bobbary ms Jed and using axes and hammers, began tearing the building down.

By nightfall it had been completely raised. So they destroyed this mosque and uh Narindra Modi was still pretty low on the totem pole at this point, but his skill as an organizer earned him a place organizing the rath Yatra that like Chariot march across the country. It was his job to organize the Gujrat section of the Chariot March, and the ram Yatha sparked a series of horrifically bloody

Hindew Muslim riots all across the subcontinent. The violence took weeks to die down, and it was particularly bad in Mumbai, one of India's largest cities. Muslims were forced either by mobs or by basic self preservation to move out of neighborhoods. Their families had occupied for generations. Many moved into what we're effectively ghettos. The riots and dislow casion caused by the ram Rath Theatra's aftershocks contributed to the growing violent

polarization of Indian society. One survivor the New Yorker interviewed reported feeling as if Mumbai had been transformed by all this. That is the first time I ever really thought about my identity, our entire neighborhood, our friends were going to kill us, and all this was fucking bank for the RSS. By nine years after Moodi joined, the b j P had grown to become the single largest party in Parliament.

As it ever does, the rioting and racial hatred sparked by this fascist organization convinced more people to join it. As they grew to consume the Indian political system, a few forward thinking academics began to study the party and its members. One of these was Ashish Nandi, and I'm gonna quote again from The New Yorker here, a trained psychologist, he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists.

One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was then a little known b JP functionary Nandi interviewed Modi for several hours and came away shaken. His subject, Nandi told me, exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality, puritanical, rigid, a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and

an enormous ego that protected annawing and security. During an interview, Moody elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the target of a global conspiracy in which every Muslim in the country was likely complicit. Moody was a fascist in every sense. Nandy said, I don't mean this as a term of abuse. It's a diagnostic category. Cool and good the only diagnostics that I'm sorry, it's just just going to come back to the b j P. Sometimes all you can do is laugh about blow jobs when you're

talking about fascism, because they hate blow jobs. It's a diagnostic category, That's what she said. Yeah, that's what That's what this psychologist come not just being like you're a fascion. I'm being like, fascism is a mental disorder when I am diagnosing you with it. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So in September two thousand one, a month in which nothing else

of historical import occurred. Nurindra Moody was appointed to be the Chief Minister of the government of Gujerat, which the rs S and b JP had begun to dominate in a series of elections. Moody's rise to power was not due to his own electoral success though um. It was due to basically his ability to politic internally, and he basically undermined another rival of his and the v j P, a guy named Keshubai Patel. I am so sorry about the names here. You know me, yes, yes, yes, uh

so yeah. I found a quote from a guy named Vinod Meta, which is the former editor of an Indian news magazine called Outlook, who remembers Mody turning up at their office in the year two thousand with a bunch of documents incriminating this rival of his Patel and a scandal quote. I immediately felt this man was bad news. There was something sinister about him and the way he spoke, and I felt deeply uncomfortable in his presence. He complained

about Patel and talked about corruption. He came back a couple of times, but I didn't run the story before I knew what had happened. He was back at Gujrat

as the chief minister in Keshubai's place. So Narendra like basically Fox with this other guy he sees his arrival, succeeds in kind of maneuvering him out of power, and he winds up as the man in charge on gat On February two, when a passenger train stops in the city of go Drop after departing from Iodia, many of the people on board the train were Hindu pilgrims who had been visiting the destroyed Bobary Maschi and mosque in order to advocate the building of a Hindu temple over

its remains. Most of them were members of the RSS. Somehow, Muslim residents of Gojra realized that this train was filled with RSS activists and they began to shout and jeer at them, and the Hindu partisans inside began to shout back. The train stalled as it began to depart, and this provided time for the confrontation to escalate. No one knows exactly what happened next, but someone threw something on fire into one of the cars, possibly like a Muslim shop

owner like Tasta stove in there. It's really not known for certain, but one of the people in the crowd outside saw something on fire into the into the train, and I I've been on a lot of Indian trains. They're they're incredibly crowded, and a lot of people wearing like long flowing cotton garments and also carrying like piles of like clothes and stuff with them, like what they

own and whatnot. And it's incredibly flammable in there, and this catches, like members of the group inside catch and the fire spreads, and it's just this this horrific fire, and really like before anyone knows what's happening, fifty eight people had either burned to death or suffocated on board the train. Yeah, and blame quickly settles on Muslims in

general for this horrible tragedy. So members of the VHP, the religious wing of the RSS, the group that most of the people in the train had been a part of, petition Narendra Modi for the right to parade the burnt corpses of their members through the streets of the Metabot, the largest city in Guat. What. Yeah, They're like, we wanna, we wanna really like make the most of this tragedy.

So we want to carry the dead bodies of our members who got burnt to death and marched them through the city to try to like spark a fucking riot, Like that's the goal here. Excuse me, I gotta say that, you know. I was like, Oh, I'm with them, I'm with them, They're reaving. Wait what Yeah, so I feel like that really went quick. Yeah. Um. And the Home Secretary of Guzerat warns Moody that allowing them to do this will spark another violent riot, telling him things will

go out of hand. But out of hand is exactly where Moody wanted things to go, and sure enough, he allows them to march the corpses of their dead members through the street, and this provokes mobs of furious Hindus to take to the streets all throughout the cities of Gurot, shouting take revenge and slaughter the Muslims. Rioters cut open

the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women and murdered babies. Hundreds of women were gang y. Yeah, this is where we get where that paragraph all right, Yeah, okay, touche, you son of a bit. There's mask gang rapes at least one Muslim boy is forced to drink kerosene and swallow a lit match. It's it's bad. It's a bad set of riots. Can you swallow a lit match? I'm no, I'm not. I know that's not the part I should

focus on. It's not I don't think well, yeah, um And also a member of the Congress Party as San Joffrey, was caught by a crowd and publicly dismembered. So like, these are really bad rights. By the time it's all over, somewhere around two to three thousand people are dead, and the vast majority of them are Muslims, and it will

will never get an exact death toll. Um. Reports began to filter out in the immediate wake that this violence had not been purely spontaneous, just an uncontrollable expression of rage. And I'm gonna quote from the New Yorker again, they appeared to have been largely planned and directed by the RSS.

Teams of men armed with clubs, guns, and swords fanned out across the States Muslim enclaves, often carrying voter rolls and other official documents that led them to Muslims homes and shops so they get like government information on where Muslims are living in town. To carry out this stuff

sounds very crystal Nocti. Yeah, Modi, the man in charge of the Guadi government was nowhere to be found, but his influence was felt everywhere as he ordered Indian Army soldiers to post up in their barracks rather than intervened to stop the violence. Police also received orders to stand down, and in many areous they just took part in the killing. One of the very few officers who did not go along with this was Rahul Sharma, the top cop and

the heavily Muslim district of bob Nagar. He later testified that he received no word at all from his superiors on how to contain the riots, with which lasted more than three months. Sharma took matters into the riots lasted for more than three months. Yea three months of constant street violence. Holy ship. Yeah, it's hardcore. Um, it's a bad time um. And Sharma is one of like the few heroes of this time. So he like is being told nothing at all from his superiors, like what to

do about these murder mobs? Um. And it kind of comes to a head when there's huge organized crowd of rss supporters with weapons start like posting up outside a school filled with four hundred Muslim children. Um, and he eventually orders his cops to like fire into the crowd, which is really maybe the only time I can think of where I'm like, yeah, it's good that the police shot at that crowd. Holy shit. But he successfully saves all these kids. He's a good guy. He did the

right thing. Um, most police did not. The vast majority of Guadi police let the programs continue unabated. As a general rule, this too conforms to the standard behavior of law enforcement during acts of ethnic cleansing all around the world. The ones who do not actively participate very often sit back and watch. So we can assume anywhere there is ethnic cleansing occurring, the police will be a part of it actively rather than protecting the victims. That's just true.

Multiple content for aligning. What's the opposite of a silver lining, like a ship streak? Yeah, it's like a ship streak. Yeah all right, yeah yeah, like a ship streak covering one of those like thin blue lines. Yeah. Um. So Sharma was shuffled out of his job and criticized by India's Home Minister. A b JP functionary named Advani for

allowing too many Hindus to die in his district. So like one of the few cops who like does what you would hope a police officer due and protects the public gets like basically fired for the fact that too many Hindus died because like some of his cops had to like shoot at Hindus to like stop them from massacring all these school children. So in the end, two thousand people are more were killed in three months of horrific violence. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people,

mostly Muslims, were forced out of their homes. As with the earlier rioting in September nineteen ninety, the Guzati riots left a vastly more polarized state in their wake. Muslims were forced out of neighborhoods they'd long inhabited and dumped into slums for their own safety. One of these formed in the vast garbage dump of the city of Amitabad. Citizens Village, as it came to be known, hosted tens of thousands of Muslim refugees. What little aid it received

was supplied by volunteers. Narendra Modi's government refused to help when he was asked why he had abandoned these people, who were also citizens of Guzat. Moody replied, relief camps are actually child making factories. Those who keep on multiplying the population should be taught a lesson. Wow, he's a cool guy. Cool not coming, dude. The guzat Yots were

met with a tepid response by the Indian government. Only a few dozen rioters were ever convicted of anything, and only one elected official in the b j P, Maya ben Kodnani, was ever convicted of murder and conspiracy. She was cleared of all charges when Moody became the Prime minister. So that's nice, Pretty convenient, Pretty convenient. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. Though the international community was outraged by what happened in Gurod and the RSS and Nearindra.

Moody in particular became global pariahs. Moody was banned from travel to the United States or the United Kingdom. His reputation suffered enough that his fellow b JP members in India temporarily disavowed him. In two thousand four, the b JP Prime Minister at all was voted out of office and he blamed Nearindra Moody for his loss. So for a while it seemed like the guse Roight riots, as horrible as they were, had sounded a death knell to

Moody's career and to the RSS. But of course those riots would prove to be only at the beginning, and on Thursday's episode, we're going to talk about what came next. But you know what it's time to talk about now. I don't know the amazing goods and services, the amazing plugs that you have to plug what. Yeah, we're in the p's on UM. Me and the other members of the b J p UM can be found on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia so f I y A,

and you can hear me on my two podcasts. One is on iHeart with Miles Gray from Daily Say Guys called for Twenty Day Fiance, and the other one is Private Parts Unknown with Courtney Kosak, where we travel all around the world and talk to people about love and sex and sexuality. Yeah, I love Courtney, Courtney's the best love, Courtney hate the growing spectr of international fascism. UM. Listen to Sophia's podcastle on her website as a quote from you.

It is, it is. That's my only book jacket quote. Um, so listen to those podcasts. Maybe pick up a couple of ives, a couple of other weapons. Uh, just you know, get ready for your own local ethnic cleansing mobs. Um boy, howdye, Sophie? How do we end an episode? You can find Robert on Twitter alright, right, okay, you can find us on the twin Instagram and at Bastards Pod. You can find our sources underneath the episode notes if you just scroll down. Um,

and you can listen Robert on Worst Year Ever. And we have another project coming out very soon. Look for that. Yeah, the Women's War March Episode one mar trailer March eighteenth, look out for it. So, boys, Sophie, the way you handled that was so much more responsible than just telling the audience to arm themselves to fight against mobs of violence. Facts. I'm here before, thank you? All right, the episode is now over. Excellent