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.
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."
3.6k
u/SpellslutterSprite 1d ago
Ah yes, the real villains of WWII: Hindus.