[Reader-list] Fwd:Understanding Hindutva....who is a fascist...???.....

[Lalit Ambardar]

Dear  Shudhabrata & Dear Rohan,
 
Well this kind of intellectual misappropriation is often adopted as a means to (mis) represent history in an intended manner or to eulogise or defame .You have done no different. 
Actually, I am not surprised though but it is sad that you have chosen to selectively pick in portions & mis- interpret text to denigrate a national icon. 
Please go through the following article by George Orwell. You don’t need to feel embarrassed if you find yourself fitting into one of the categories (of fascists)  detailed out in the article.
Regards all
LA
George Orwell
What is Fascism?
TRIBUNE
1944
Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’
One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.
It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:
Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.
Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists. This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.
Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a ‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and Trotskyists.
Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky's own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P.
Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;
War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.
Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People's Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’. Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both denounced as Fascist phenomena.
Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.
* * *
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.
But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.
1944
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CC: virtuallyme at gmail.com; reader-list at sarai.netFrom: shuddha at sarai.netSubject: Re: [Reader-list] Fwd:Understanding HindutvaDate: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:35:00 +0530To: lalitambardar at hotmail.com
Lalit, 
Actually, Subhash Chandra Bose, didn't have any problems being called a Fascist. So you don't have to get your knickers in a twist if anyone should choose to call him one. And nor should we have any hesitation in calling him a Fascist. A Fascist is, well, a Fascist. Bose's book, 'The Indian Struggle' which he wrote in Vienna while courting Austrian Fascists in the 1930s actually calls for a synthesis of Fascism and the kind of state being developed in Stalin's Russia. He also courted Mussolini (not very successfully) the most important Italian Fascist politician, in the same period. This is way before the well known alliance with Hitler and Tojo, which most Indian nationalists sort of turn a blind eye to while performing their genuflections to the obscenity of war-time realpolitik. 



As early as 1930 -- in his inaugural speech as mayor of Calcutta --  Bose first expressed his support for a fusion of socialism and fascism. This is not long after the time when he personally led a lathi charge against a procession of agitating Industrial Workers in Calcutta, who were peacefully asking for the Congress leadership, including Bose, who they thought (mistakenly) would be sympathetic to their demands, to pay some attention to their plight. In doing this, Bose played the role of the Fascist Storm Trooper leader to the hilt, dressed in a quasi military uniform, leading a band of armed thugs on a violent rampage against a peaceful assembly of workers. But it wasn't just the 'fancy-dress' aspects of Fascism that attracted Bose.  Let us pay attention to his own words.

“... I would say we have here in this policy and program a synthesis of what modern Europe calls Socialism and Fascism. We have here the justice, the equality, the love, which is the basis of Socialism, and combined with that we have the efficiency and the discipline of Fascism as it stands in Europe today.”

( From Bose's inaugural speech of Sept. 24, 1930. Quoted in: Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York: 1990), p. 234.)

For example, in late 1944 -- almost a decade-and-a-half later -- in a speech to students at Tokyo University, he asserted that India must have a political system "of an authoritarian character. . . To repeat once again, our philosophy should be a synthesis between National Socialism and Communism." 

(Speech of November 22, 1944, in S.C. Bose, Fundamental Questions of Indian Revolution (Calcutta: Netaji Research Bureau, 1970), pp. 403-4.)

His detailed comments on Fascism in his book The Indian Struggle: 1920-1934, which was first published in 1935, accurately represent the views he held throughout most of his career. This is what he says, for instance about 'Democracy and Freedom'

“ It (the future Indian political order) will not stand for a democracy in the Mid-Victorian sense of the term, but will believe in government by a strong party bound together by military discipline, as the only means of holding India together and preventing a chaos, when Indians are free and are thrown entirely on their own resources."

Here he is again, on 'Fascism'

“One is inclined to hold that the next phase in world- history will produce a synthesis between Communism and Fascism. And will it be a surprise if that synthesis in produced in India?... In spite of the antithesis between Communism and Fascism, there are certain traits in common. Both Communism and Fascism believe in the supremacy of the State over the individual. Both denounce parliamentary democracy. Both believe in party rule. Both believe in the dictatorship of the party and in the ruthless suppression of all dissenting minorities. Both believe in a planned industrial reorganization of the country. These common traits will form the basis of the new synthesis. That synthesis is called by the writer "Samyavada" -- an Indian word, which means literally "the doctrine of synthesis or equality." It will be India's task to work out this synthesis.”

Subsequently, in an interview to the British Indian communist journalist, Rajani Palme Dutt, Bose muted his enthusiasm for Fascism somewhat, while not abandoning it altogether, but came back with fulsome endorsements of Fascism as is evident in his speeches and declarations made in Germany and Japan. Bose's was not a the 'fascism of an opportunist'. Rather his occasional 'anti-fascism' was certainly opportunist and totally in keeping with the Machieavellian political personality that he assiduously cultivated for himself. 

All of this is rather well documented. And all you need to do is to go to any decent research library and look up a few books and documents (the ones I have cited will suffice) to know exactly what Bose thought of Fascism and when he said what he said.

I think the fact that Bose either died, or did not choose to appear, or could not choose to appear and stake his claim at the political sweepstakes in India after the transfer of power in 1947 is probably the greatest stroke of good fortune to have befallen the people of this country. I do not suffer from any nostalgia for the Nehruvian epoch. But the banal mediocrity of the Nehru years, in my opinion, are a far cry from the disaster that a combination of Bose and Patel would have meant for India. Bose's dreams for India were a brutal and authoritarian dictatorship, suitably 'Indianized' by a high dose of Vedantic Messianism and somewhat coloured by radical sounding slogans. (In welding this nightmare together, Bose inspired by what he had seen or knew of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan). I am sure that this would have landed us in a far greater mess than we are in already.

As always, I would have been happier if our uber-patriotic list members done a little more homework before embarassing themselves and all of us, yet again.

best, 

Shuddha



On 15-Oct-08, at 12:12 AM, Lalit Ambardar wrote:

.

Netaji Subash Chandra Bose- the hero of the nation had met Hitler & had sought his help in the freedom struggle against the British colonialism. Is he too sought to be declared a fascist?






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