By Krishna Jha
Marx has written that religion is the opium of the masses. Also it is the sigh of the oppressed. Both express the wretchedness of our populace. They need to forget the present, which is awfully painful. Future appears to be bleak and past is lost in the gloom. It is this anguish that is used by those in power for to be in power, despite the fact that people are suffering because of their policies. They are the cause and also the effect.
Opium has been known as a strong intoxicant, so is religion. It is used in moments of crisis as a veiled weapon, to fan up the antagonism among masses. It was used in Germany by the Nazi party, a key architect of the holocaust, to annihilate the Jews in the name of Purity of the Aryan Race. Those who swore by the idea of a white Nordic superior race were also the believers of the tale of the lost city of Atlantis where people of the purest blood had lived, believed to have situated between England and Portugal in the Atlantic ocean. These mystical fascists admired Hitler, who was loved and supported by the alt rights. These elements wanted concentration of capital in very few hands, and also merger of industrial and also financial capital. To achieve this, immediate need was to crush opposition, with no care for the plight of people in the country, and hence needed to intoxicate them.
Hitler had always believed in traditional ideals, and criticized atheism. Hitler carried within him the teaching that Jews were the killers of god. Their extermination could be carried without a sense of guilt.
He made people believe that he was acting under the avenging hands of god. He believed in Positive Christianity, popular in Nazi Germany since there were similarities between the two. The Nazi movement was hostile to Germany’s traditional churches. The minister of church affairs in Hitler’s government said that positive Christianity did not believe in Apostle’s creed, or faith in Christ or son of god, Christ. Positive Christianity was represented by Nazi party.
The Nazis’ Positive Christianity was a variety of Clerical fascism. Hitler believed that he understood the religion of war better than the highest priests, that were the generals.
In practice what he did was to be remembered by the entire humanity. It was state sponsored genocide. They had set up extermination camps in Treblinka, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor and Chelmno in occupied Poland. Holocaust is also referred as catastrophe.
There was the mention of “thousand year” number which was roughly the number of years the Holy Roman Empire lasted. The Holy Roman Empire was considered by Hitler to be the First Reich, with the German Empire being the Second Reich. So Hitler wanted his Reich to last a Thousand Years so as to be as great as the First one. There was also a religious significance as a radical Christian denomination referred to as “Millennialism” that says something roughly along the lines of “When Christ Returns, he will rule for a thousand years.”
Hitler’s personal conception of God was as “Providence”. For instance, when he survived the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, he ascribed it to Providence saving him to pursue his tasks. In fact, as time went on, Hitler’s conception of Providence became more and more intertwined with his belief in his own inability to make an error of judgment. Alfred Jodl stated at Nuremberg that Hitler had “an almost mystical conviction of his infallibility as leader of the nation and of the war”.
The brutality with which the attempt was made to wipe out the entire Jewish race in Hitler’s Germany had highly impressed RSS chief MS Golwalkar for years together. He had glorified Hitler, justified Caste. Golwalkar had always placed the minorities as second class citizens and believed they would always be placed like that. Like Hitler believed in the purity of German Aryan race, Golwalkar believed in the purity of Hindutva. In a speech at the Reichstag, German Fuhrer Hitler threatened the annihilation of entire Jewish race in Europe. For the same reason, Golwalkar hailed him and today, the Ministry of Culture under the BJP regime tweeted from its official handle saying on his birth anniversary, “{…}MS Golwalkar was a great thinker and scholar, and his thoughts would remain a great source of inspiration and will continue to guide generations that are to come.” Despite the assertions, facts remain otherwise. M S Golwalkar was openly opposed to democracy and Constitution and was Hindu supremacist.
If Golwalkar sought to learn from Nazi’s anti-Jew policy, Modi has started imitating Hitler. He indicated in an interview that God has imparted him with “urja” (energy) because Almighty wants to get some job done by him. He asserted that he is “convinced” of being a godsend.
“Pehle jab tak maa zinda thi mujhe lagta tha shayad mujhe biologically janm diya gaya hai. Maa ke jaane ke baad, een saare anubhavon ko mai jod kar dekhta hoon toh mai convince ho jata hoon ki parmatma ne mujhe bheja hai. (Till my mother was alive, I had the impression that perhaps my birth was a biological one. After her demise when I view after assimilating all the experiences, I am convinced that God has sent me).” Modi is heard saying in an interview to News 18 last week.
Like Hitler, he too has started talking in terms of 1000-year period. “What is happening now will take India towards a brighter future for the coming 1000 years. In my mind, it is clear that this is our time,” he said in another interview.
Obsession of Narendra Modi with himself is ominous. (IPA Service)