In 2016 the most searched word on the Merriam-Webster website was ‘Fascism’. The same year Donald Trump won a four year ‘residency’ in the White House. Need a Newton moment of a falling apple to divine the correlation ?
That alarm bells for recrudescence of fascism ,buried in 1940s in graves of Hitler and Mussolini, were ringing 70 years later in a two and a quarter century old puissant and vibrant democracy shocked many. It was a stark reminder of the vulnerability of democracies to ensnares of charismatic leaders with fascist leanings. Did not Fuhrer and Il Duce sow their seeds in democratic fields before bastardizing, dismantling, and finally superseding it by a political system in which the Supreme leader is the sole fountainhead of power ? What happened next is ghoulish history.
Dark and dusty soots of the fascist blaze wafted into our freedom struggle as well. If purity of the aryan race was an obsession with Hitler, revivifying an imagined ‘race consciousness or spirit’ that had supposedly united and charged vedic aryans became the raison ďetre for RSS. Hitler's solution of the Jewish minority problem found resonance with Golwalkar,
‘Germany has shown how 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 to learn and profit by.’
Golwalkar cooed ,‘RSS inspired by one flag ,one leader, one ideology is lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land.’ Jinnah went further, after having catapulted ML to power in Pakistan he bluntly let Lord Mountbatten know who would lead it, ‘In my position it is I who will give the advice and others will act on it’
Ambedkar speaking of Savarkar and Jinnah quipped, ‘ both agree, not only agree but insist that there are two nations in India- one the Muslim nation and the other Hindu Nation. They differ only as regards the terms and conditions on which the two nations must live.’
Thus, the kindle wood for a fascist blaze had been piled up- ‘othering’ and ‘us against them’, authoritarianism. Only ‘charismatic leadership’ played truant. ML had it in Jinnah, the Hindu right whined, wheezed, made big noises but lacked effective leadership, mass appeal and following. Both lay with the Congress- Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. They had mesmerized the masses, and held them tightly in their emotional sway, more particularly the Hindu masses. It was nascent India's good fortune that all three were implacable votaries of liberal and secular democracy, envisioning a multi-national, multi-cultural, pluralistic secular society and polity for India. In the 1945 elections Congress won over 91% of the non- Muslim votes, HMS was wiped out. People had shown the door to Hindu Right. On the other hand, it was Pakistan’s tragedy that Jinnah helmed a nation with outer trappings of democracy and a fascist core. To this day it remains a failed democracy, politically unstable.
Considering the overwhelming mass electoral support for the Congress, one would have expected that the core values of a democratic, pluralistic social existence would find common acceptance and be imbibed in the national ethos as the nation took its rightful place in the comity of nations. It was not to be. Even after the dust of freedom struggle had settled down, the Hindu conservatives thought 'a united freedom struggle of all communities and sections nothing but denationalization.' With how much legitimacy ? They continue even now to 'other' minorities.
Our freedom struggle has become a misty haze. The Amrit Mahotsava is a great opportunity to recall and revere its heroes - Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and lacs of others who brought it about.
It is also an occasion to be mindful of the toxic fumes that it released and still linger. Fascist tendencies for one never dissipated and many think are only strengthening.
Look around, take note and beware.
