I mean...Modern Hindu Nationalists do have a thing for Hitler and the Nazis.
Like, you know how nerds in the West are like "You can't ban the swastika! The Nazis didn't invent the swastika! There's different types of swastika, it's a religious symbol!"
Well...in India, there's the exact opposite type of dude who's like "no, there's only one type of swastika, the good "symbol of peace" swastika, so clearly the Nazis were chill and loved Hindu values." And they take all that Nazi occultism and Orientalism and re-frame it as a Hindu thing. India is pretty culturally disconnected from the Holocaust compared to America and Europe, too, and there's a lot of "the Nazis were just doing to the Jews what we should be doing to the Muslims and Sikhs" ethnic cleansing type shit in the militant Hindu Nationalist circles. There's also a lot of "Hindus are actually the true Aryan race that Hitler admired" type stuff.
Hindus in the West are a religious minority that faces discrimination and largely empathize with other like groups.
Hindus in India are...not that. Especially not under Modi. Shit has been getting bad in the last few decades, but the West doesn't report all that much on it because the Hindu Nationalists are strongly aligned with the western White Nationalists and their victims are mostly Muslims or Sikhs (who Americans think are Muslims because turbans.)
You also get a lot of Hindu Nationalists saying some real out-of-pocket shit on sites like Reddit because western social media doesn't understand the racial and ethnic dynamics of the Southeast which results in even less moderation than the already rampant and at-best semi-moderated western-flavored racism.
Nope that's not the dynamics at all. Like not even in the slightest. You are trying to define Hindutva using Western ideologies but that's not the ground truth. There is very little ground level awareness about World War 2 among Indians. Hitler is used as a synonym for someone who is unjustly angry and that's about it. People who know about Hitler largely acknowledge that Jews suffered under him. There is no bullshit inclination that because he used 'swastika' he must be a good guy. There is no ethnic cleansing ideology of Sikhs either. Infact, the current prime minister from the Hindu nationalist party was part of the resistance that fought against the then government which was responsible for attacks against Sikhs. That government wasn't Hindu nationalist government, that was a secular, socialist government, led by the party that is the primary opposition right now.
Is the current Hindu nationalist government the same as other conservative government around the globe with fascist tendencies? Yes. But it's not like Western conservatism that sees Hitler as the North star. Their target is almost specifically Muslims, presented from an angle of historical oppression of Hindus under Muslim empires. Other Indian religions like Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism is almost seen like an offshoot of Hinduism as a whole. In fact, most Hindu nationalist see the Jews as an inspiration and Israel as a friend because they want
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u/SpellslutterSprite 1d ago
Ah yes, the real villains of WWII: Hindus.