Part One: Narendra Modi, And India's Weird Nazi Obsession

Robert is joined by Sofiya Alexandra to discuss Narendra Modi.

Footnotes:

1. The Delhi pogrom 2020 is Amit Shah’s answer to an election defeat
2. What Happened in Delhi Was a Pogrom
3. Hitler Film Reveals India's Nazi Fascination
4. World's Biggest Toilet-building Program in India Gets Mixed Results
5. Hitler’s Hindus: The Rise and Rise of India’s Nazi-loving Nationalists
6. Humble Beginnings: The Early Years
7. In pictures: Narendra Modi's early life
8. Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi’s India
9. PM Modi turns 69: As a child Narendra Modi joined NCC, wanted to serve in the Army
10. Modi: From tea boy to India's leader
11. Personal Life Story
12. Narendra Modi: man of the masses
13. Modi to youth: If you don’t make sacrifice in battle today, history will curse you tomorrow
14. The Unbearable Loneliness of Narendra Modi

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M what's in quarantine? My GOP legislators. Hello, dear friends.
I made the previous joke about Ted Cruz quarantining and
then being exposed again and immediately re self quarantining, back
in an earlier distant age, when such things were a
little bit more funny seeming. We are not in a

(00:21):
position where that's super funny right now. So I would
like to replace the bit that Sophia and I did
about that with this new bit, which is a joke.
Uh So, there's this pirate and he walks into a
bar and the pirates. The bartender looks at the pirate
and he's got like a steering wheel in his pants,
and the bartenders like, hey, what do you well you
got that steering wheel and your pants for? And the

(00:43):
pirate responds, yard tis driving me nuts. That is the joke.
Please enjoy the rest of this episode. I'm Robert Evans.
This is Behind the Bastards podcast about Terrible People. Here
with me, Sophia Alexandra. Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.

(01:03):
Thanks for having me, Robert, Sophie, thank you. I did
a musical intro for you, just doing mouth sounds. I
noticed it and it was good, and he didn't like
malfunctioned like a broken robot like you did last time
when you tried to intro. So this is really a
step up. I've I've decided to turn a new leaf
professionally because I think it's important to be professional. So

(01:27):
in the spirit of professionalism, do you want to play
with the switch blade a stranger sent me in the mail? Yes,
please you try. I got a switch blade so every
time I come back to l A, I get new
fan packages and this one was just a switch blade. Um,
so that's pretty fun. We've been carrying it around playing
with it. Didn't know how to close it for a while,
so it was just waving it around. Sophie is trying

(01:47):
to figure out how to close it. Now it's a
good time. Yeah, I'm excited to figure this puzzle out. Yeah,
Chris Goddard like three seconds, Chris immediately, Chris our editor,
immediately figured out how to close it. The rest of
us were in this particular early me shamefully couldn't figure
it out. So I was just I was just waving
an open knife around for a while, like a pinching situation,

(02:08):
and just like we're good with oshow right, Sophie. Okay,
Sophie says, everything I do is fine. So, Sophia, have
you heard about non Dram Moody? No? Oh boy, Well
he's the Prime Minister of India, and you heard about
how like a couple of couple three weeks ago, there
was that umagram in uh New Delhi where like mobs

(02:32):
of angry Hindu extremists were chasing Muslims through the street
and killed dozens of them. Um. Not as familiar as
I should be. Oh boy, Yeah that happened. Um, And
we're going to talk about everything that led up to
that happening. Um. So this is gonna be a fun one.
Fascism come. You know how sometimes countries are like functioning

(02:52):
democracies for a long time and then a fascist gets
in charge and you realize that, like, oh man, everybody
was still way more racist than I gave him credit for. Shit.
You know that happens in some countries. What do you mean?
And where I don't can't relate to that at all.
Yesterday we're talking about something that has only happened in
India and nowhere else, and it's currently not ongoing, yes,

(03:17):
anywhere near or around US. I love talking about things
that every single person listening to this podcast hasn't experienced
in their own country. That's my favorite thing to talk
about on this podcast. Good times. So yeah, hey, just
quick question, how many dead babies in this episode? I
just need to know how much to steal myself for this.

(03:38):
There's like one paragraph we talk about a couple, but
other than that, it's mostly the stution of murdered adults. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's pretty light on that. Okay, do you like me
more or less now that you're only having me? Now
that you're not e me on only dead children episodes?
You know what it is, Sophia. I feel like I
feel like you know when you when you when you
get into a new relationship with somebody, like you stay

(03:59):
with what's comfortable for a while, And so we stayed
on the dead baby train for a little while because
it made you feel safe. Could make me feel safe.
But now I'm willing to experiment with fascist foreign political leaders. Oh,
you want to invite a fascist into our relationship? Yes,
I do. There's always a point in every relationship where
you invite a fascist strong man and you freaky, let's
do this. That's why they keep winning, actually, because you

(04:22):
just want to bring him in. You can't keep him
out of your bedroom. You just like to dom and
I appreciate that about you. Oh boy, this is gonna
feel so much less comfortable after we get to all
the murdered people. I mean, that's why I'm really getting
it in right now. So I'm gonna start by talking
a little bit about Nazism in India. As you know,

(04:45):
big fan, big fan of Nazism in India are really
as a June nothing warms in my heart. So Nazism
in India have a long, strange history that's really really
difficult to talk about. As we discussed in our Savitri
Devi episodes, the O G Nazis were obsessed with India
as the homeland of the ancient Arians that they idolized.

(05:07):
Uh and the S S on an Airba, which was
like the s S Archaeological Division, actually sent expeditions into
Tibet and northern India to seek out the origins of
their mythical superman. So like, how heartwarming that they had
enough time to like follow this beautiful they really thread
dial they were like murdering all across Europe. Is just
so sweet that they were like you know what, let's

(05:27):
explore a little bit of some something mystical. Yeah, this
was when they were sending this at was like kind
of the slow murder period where they were like they
hadn't because there weren't that many like Jewish people actually
in Germany proper, so they really hadn't ramped up the
killing yet and it were mostly doing weird ship and
murdering their political opponents and then pre crystall locked. No,

(05:48):
but it's it's pre um invasion of Poland and stuff,
so it's like it's like pre the start of actual hostilities.
So they they're they're definitely killing a lot of people,
but like by Nazis Anderds, they haven't really got into Yeah. Yeah,
let's have a little bit of archaeology with our our

(06:09):
murder appetizers, just like a like a slow ramp up.
Yeah yeah, Like I'm not gonna make an edge in
comment here. Um. So, while the ideological underpinnings of Nazism
did not get really any purchase in the Indian subcontinent
during the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, many Indians on
Nazi Germany as a potential ally in their battle against
British imperialism. So one of the tough things to understand.

(06:31):
And this is also true a different kind of extent
with like Ukraine is UM, there was a number of
folks in India who supported the Nazis during the period
with the Nazis were in charge not because they cared
about Nazism, but because they hated the British Empire, which
is like, yeah, okay, I mean everybody hates the British Empire. Yeah.
And if you're like a Hindu nationalist or an Indian

(06:53):
nationalist and like a reasonable person like nineteen thirty, you know,
you can look at the Nazis be like, well, I'm
sure they've done bad stuff, but like, let's look at
what the British Empire has been doing, right, Like, I
think that's a long history, have been terrible, a lot
more reason to be concerned. Um. So that's part of
the support here, and that aspect of it, the part
where it's like kind of understandable. Support of the Nazis.

(07:16):
UM reached its height with the Indish Legion or the
Indian Volunteer Legion of the wathan SS. This was an
all Indian military force aimed formed at the guidance of
Indian nationalist leaders Subhas Chandra Bos. The forces were initially
formed out of Indian POWs captured fighting against the forces
of the British Empire. So like they would beat a
British army and they would capture a bunch of Indian

(07:38):
soldiers that the British had taken in and then they
would be like, you guys want to like invade India
and free it from British domination. And these guys were like, yeah,
of course that sounds good. You guys want to build
us no, yah, yeah, it was a little bit like that. Um.
So the idea was that like these Indian soldiers would
act as pathfinders and like helped lead the German army
into India when it was time to invade the subcontinent

(08:01):
uh and Germany wound up collecting well over ten thousand
Indian soldiers that way, So they were like ten thousand Indian,
Hindu and Muslim Indian soldiers in the s s. Most
people don't know this story. It's so wild, it's really weird.
They were eventually stationed in France just in time for
the Normandy landings, and they never wound up taking part
in much meaningful combat, but a lot of them did

(08:23):
get killed by the French resistance. Like it's this really
weird story. There are not confused. You'd be when like
an S S officer came to take you away and
he was Indian, and you'd be like, well, they didn't
do that really, like they weren't doing normal SS stuff
like they even had in there you have to take
people away. No, they're not really person I don't think

(08:45):
they knew what it was. I think they were like,
you guys hate the English and we hate us some
English again, Like that's a horrible mistake. Yeah, yeah, it's
an it's a real comedy of errors. You could get
a yeah, um, and it's it's weird because like there's
like photos of Irwin Rommel like reviewing parades of these

(09:07):
guys and you can see like fucking Rommel um like
like pinning medals on the chest of guys with turbans,
and like it's just this, it's it's a very strange
chapter of history. Um. But they did have like a
clause in their contract that said they would not be
used for offensive operations anywhere but India, So like they
did kind of have written into their contract we're not
like fully on board with the Nazi thing, so I

(09:30):
wouldn't call I don't know, like it's weird. It's cool
to other have other people have who have joined like
armed things, gotten a chance to be like, you know
what this but not this, I don't like all the
way up to the killing, but not the killing. You
don't get to do that, right, Yeah, this is the
only time I've heard about something like this happening. Yeah,
it seems unusual. It's a weird case from the war.

(09:53):
And you can imagine if that's what soldiering really was.
You sign up, but you get to say no things.
That's actually that's actually how the German army were today. There,
as far as I know, the only one where if
you are a German soldier you have a right written
into like the law of the nation that says that
if you have a moral issue with a deployment or something,
you get to say no. I wonder why that's there, yea,

(10:15):
I wonder why they have that rule. Um. So, after
the war, India gained her independence on the back of
a fundamentally peaceful movement. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the chief
architects of independence, was assassinated though by a member of
the r s S, a Hindu nationalist political party with
ties to Savitri Devi, the birth mother of esoteric Hitlerism,

(10:37):
who we talked about a few weeks ago. India and
Pakistan split apart to in large part to fears by
Indian Muslims that they would be dominated by Hindus in
any democratic system. This mass migration resulted in what some
have termed a mutual genocide, killing well over a million people,
possibly like as much as three million people. It was
a horrific, horrific like the split of Indian Pakistan, which
is unbelievably violent, and it's one of those things where

(11:00):
like you'd be really hard pressed to like lockdown like
a side that was like mutual. I've never heard again
the term mutual was just in the mutual genocide is
an insane name and also the name of my death
metal band. Yeah, it is a good name for a
metal band. Yeah, And it's this is all a very
complicated history, but there so you can see there's like
this huge tension between so India is simultaneously has more

(11:23):
Muslims than any other country on Earth, but is also
the vast majority of people in it or Hindu um.
And this has been a problem for a while in
terms of like um violent uh differences between the two groups,
in part because like at different points one group or

(11:43):
another has like ruled the nation and the other people,
particularly for a long time the like there was like
a Muslim conquest of India and the Mogal's ruled and
it was like, so this is like there's a lot
of history here that we're not going to get to
cover in enough depth. But the fact that like the
partitioning of Indian Pakistan goes as violently as it does
um uh says something about the state of affairs at

(12:04):
the time, and it's it's worth noting that like a
lot of that also goes on the British because there
were ways to have handled this that we're smarter and
and more understanding and would have resulted in less death.
But England was just like fuck it, We'll just here.
We drew a map like this seems good to us.
You guys, figure out how to implement it, um, But

(12:25):
we already drew the map. We can't change it just
because people are dying. The map is already drawn. Yeah,
and it's probably worth noting that it's unlikely any of
this would be happening if the British hadn't ruled India
for a couple of hundred years. But Anderson gets angry
when I talked about the British Empire's She's dressed in

(12:49):
a really smart like British tweed right now. She likes
Royals and she does not funk around when she's dressed
to the nines. Is Royals, the show about the British
Royal family. Can I get the word tree? Is that
the one everyone's watching anyway? So um. In the decades
since the partitioning of India, the nation of India lurched

(13:11):
forward to take its place as the planet's largest democracy.
Elections and crises came and went, and India took its
place again as an independent power on the world stage.
Americans grew increasingly obsessed with the subcontinent as a source
of ancient wisdom and as a great vacation destination, and
at the same time Indians grew well, can I tell
you something, nothing has changed? Look at any white girls Instagram.

(13:35):
It's pretty cool. One of the neat things about going
to India, particularly to New Delhi, is how many uh,
like young American like nineteen and twenty year olds you
meet there having like massive existential crises because New Delhi
is a hard fucking city to land in, like it is,
it is a shock. There's so many more people than
you'd expect, it moves so fast, it is so polluted,

(13:57):
um and so like like like people just have massive
panic attacks and there's like this whole industry based on
Like you see some rich, panicking kid who like didn't
realize what it was really going to be like to
be in a city like that, and you like come
up to him and be like, you want to get
out of Delhi, right, you want to visit like one
of these vacations spots And he's like yeah, and they're
like all of the trains are shut down, there's no
busses leaving the town. But I got a bus that

(14:18):
you can sharter And then like they've paid three thousand
dollars to rent a bus for a week. Oh my god,
what a sweet fucking hustle. It's it's pretty fun to watch.
I'm learning so much. Yeah. So at the same time
as all of this happened, uh, Indian or a number
of people in India grew increasingly obsessed with the theories
and iconography of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement, and

(14:40):
the reason behind this was complex and confusing. It ranges
widely from more or less harmless stuff, like the term
Hitler has become a common Bollywood insult for characters who
act badly, like you know, you're yeah, like like like
just sort of being a total Hitler right now. Yeah,
that's so awesome. We should do this, we should do
that one more. Um But it it kind of hints

(15:02):
at something, which is that like Hitler and the legacy
of the Nazis isn't really seen kind of the same
way over there as it is here because it's way
more distant, right, Like all of that those politics are
more distant to people there. So it's kind of like
you get some weird examples of um, like, every couple
of years, there'll be a story of just like some
shop opening up in Delhi or some other city in

(15:23):
India that's like at a huge swastika on the front
or like a picture of Hitler, and it's like usually
when you read articles interviewing the shop owner, he's like, well,
I didn't really know anything about him. I just thought
like the imagery was cool. It's like it's very strange.
Um so uh crossword and Indian bookseller sold twenty five
copies of mind comp in three years. Jaco, another Indian

(15:46):
book merchant, sold a hundred thousand copies in seven years.
Hitler's Manifesto was translated into Gujarati Hindi Uh malayal Malay
Alan Malay all Um jesus, I'm so sorry to all
of the people of Southeast um Asia that I'm gonna
be butchering words from um Bengali and to mill And
it's sold solidly across the subcontinents. So you have to

(16:08):
way hear about da Vinci code man we had in
the nights templar. We don't want that going over there. Um. Yeah.
So you have this weird thing where like there's this
mix of the history of nazism't being less immediate in
India and so like people you know, like adopt the
term Hitler as a general insult. And but also this
weird phenomenon of like Hitler's actual words selling very well

(16:32):
in chunks of India. And what makes this unsettling is
that the book is not being sold there as a
historic text instead. Mine comp has achieved popularity in India
is a sort of self help book, a guide to
success for Hindu businessman. It's not great. What the fuck? Yeah?
A guide to success. Yeah, he's like they're Tim Ferris,

(16:53):
you know, not they're Tim Fair, but like a subculture
within like the the Hindu business community. He's like a
Tim Ferris tie figure, like a great product productivity. Uh, Guru,
like set a timer for thirty minutes and then when
it goes off, you kill all the Jews. I found

(17:13):
a CBS news article that interviewed to Ruin Sinkhole, a
management student at New Delhi's Institute of Technology, was like,
without the final solution, I would have never passed my
marketing laws. We need a final solution to get in
these products off the shelves. I'll tell you what. Uh.
He read Mind so this guy to run red mind
comp as an undergraduate, and he found it inspiring and

(17:35):
he told CBS quote, it serves as a reminder that
nothing is unachievable. He said, it doesn't matter how many
millions of people you dream of killing from, how many
different kinds of groups you got this. You want to
kill three, you want to kill six? You want to
kill eleven? You got this after that point. This does

(18:00):
them back to my frequent refrain on this show that like,
people should not, as often as they are, be encouraged
to follow their dreams. Some people's dreams are garbage. Yeah,
people's dreams not good. So yeah, he said, it serves
as a reminder that nothing is unachievable, and he added
that He added that he was able to separate that
message of empowerment from the book's pervasive anti Semitic ideology.

(18:24):
So you gotta cut out all the jew hatred. But
there's some good stuff. The old I read Playboy for
the articles defends I read Hitler for the management advice exactly. Yeah,
what are you talking about, mind com Yeah, I mean, sure,
there's some juice stuff in there, but mostly what I
thought about was efficiency. Mostly it taught me how to
really set up an organization. Yeah, it taught me management skills,

(18:47):
how to talk to people before you killed them, obviously,
but you know it was very helpful, and you know,
in luring people to their deaths, it really helped. It's
wild because, like, if you actually look into how the
Third Reich was managed, it was a complete ship show
and Hitler was terrible at it and the only reason
they had as much military success as they did is
decades of primarily Prussian military ingenuity. That like, but it

(19:12):
like he wasn't good as a manager. Is this is
the core of the point. But I guess people miss that.
Um So. In two thousand ten, Bollywood director Nolan Sing
announced his plan to produce a movie titled Dear Friend Hitler,
um which was shall we say, a different take at all?
I mean, I guess I don't need to register my

(19:35):
script with a w G anymore. That's clearly someone's taken
my idea. That's a bummer Hitler colin not so bad,
I do. That was also another version of I mean
that was a musical, But I have an idea for
a script that I yeah, you want to just throw
it out here, nobody steal this. It's called Reverse Hitler,
the Hitler with a Heart of Gold, and it's about

(19:58):
a clone of Hitler, that's his opposite, whose goal is
to and it can either be I actually think this
might work best as like a Netflix mini series. His
goal is to get six million Jewish couples pregnant. Oh
my god, how about anti Hitler Anti Hitler. We can
workshop the title. Yeah, and you know what else, we
can stay on board with this. Let's make this happen.

(20:21):
I don't I don't want this to slip away. Okay, no,
we can make some bank off of this, dude, anti
Hitler Hunters is popular and that ship is trash. It is.
It's bad. It's really terrible, so bad. It's like, what horrible.
It's like written by people who I think had heard
of Jewish people but aren't. And I know the guy
involved as Jewish and the guys starring in it as Jewish,
but I don't understand it. Why are they calling the

(20:42):
grandparents soft? That's a that's a Hebrew word. That would
never be the thing. It would be Yiddish. It just
doesn't make any sense. It's like, just have one fucking
real jew look it over, just one, just one. It's
so bad, horrible, What about the fucking accent on the grandma? Sorry, no, no,

(21:02):
it's good, it's good. This is a terrible show. But
you know what's not terrible and also haunts Nazis? These
exactly exactly, every single one of them nailed it. We're back.
We're back, and we're talking about Nazism in India. So

(21:26):
into this inten this Bollywood director Nolan Saying announces that
he's going to make Dear Friend Hitler, and CBS News
reports that he was quote genuinely shocked that this created controversy,
genuinely shocked, the media express disdain, Jewish groups were horrified,
and his lead actor through it, though a bit baffled
by the reaction, quit. While such a response would seem

(21:46):
if anything understated in much of the world, Singh had
reason to believe his film would not generate even a
ripple of scandal in India. Here, Hitler is not viewed
as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of
morally ambiguous fascination. He has seen as a managed meant
guru akin to Makia Eli or Sun Sue by business students,
and an object of wonder by people craving order amidst
the chaos of India. Imagine if fifty Cent did his

(22:09):
own version of mind Coom instead of Yeah, that would
be a bummer. I feel like Kanye maybe new Kanye,
new Kanye. So uh that last line there about people
craving order amid the chaos of India that brings us
to like the real problem because while many of the

(22:29):
Indians who created weird like Hitler themed restaurants, some clothing
stores did so because they thought the imagery was neat
and they just didn't know that much about the Second
World War. There were a number of people who knew
precisely what Hitler stood for, and some of them took
deliberately took advantage of their countryman's ignorance of the Third
Reich to whitewash Hitler and mainstream fascist politics. I'm sorry,
whitewash Hitler. Yeah, it's pretty funny, Is that even possible?

(22:53):
Kind of I found a really interesting article in Herrott's
left leaning Israeli news website and it documents this was
called a Hitler's Hindu's Nazi Living Nationalists on the Rise,
and it starts with the author's recollection of their time
in a cycling expedition through India in July two thousand eight.
They found themselves in Nagpur, a city in the exact
middle of India and one of the hotbeds of the

(23:13):
Hindu nationalist movement. And Nagpur they found a pool parlor
named Hitler's Den, complete with this of a definitely st
Nazi swastika on the sign. Um. I mean obviously, what
are you going to take pictures in front of? Yeah,
I mean Hitler's dead. Of course we all need a
Hitler's Den shot. So Hitler's Den was not just the
result of good natured ignorance about European history. For you see,

(23:34):
Naper happens to hold the headquarters of an organization called
the rush Tria swam Boy swam Sevak Song or r
s S. It's a far right Hindu fascist political organization
originally founded back in the nineteen twenties. And this is
the group that like the guy who shot Gandhi was
a former member of the r s S. So the
cool dudes, one of the co founders or ideological founders

(23:58):
or whatever of the r s S is of fellow
named Vid Savarkar. And Vid Savarkar had a brother who
was a big fan of the Nazi priestess Savitri Devi,
and like wrote a forward in one of her books.
And VD Savarkar himself was a big fan of our
old buddy Adolph. In nineteen forty, he addressed a group
of Hindu nationalists by saying, there is no reason to
suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he

(24:18):
passes off as a Nazi. Nazi has improved undeniably. The
Savior of India passes off as he passes off as
a Hindu extremist. VD Savarkar's primary motivation was a desire
to see India turned into a Hindu stand that the
term here at the time, a nation completely dominated by
Hinduism and Muslims in particular, completely purged and exercise from society.

(24:42):
At that same gathering, he stated, if we Hindus an
India grow stronger in time, these Muslim friends of the
league type will have to play the part of the
German Jews instead. Yeah. Yeah, not a nice guy and
Vid Savarkar coined the term Hindutva for his new ideology.
He argued that ancient Arians who had settled in India

(25:02):
formed a Hindu nation. Hindu nous stemmed from geographical unity,
racial unity and a common culture which pitted the Hindus
of India against all others. And there was like a
cast angle to it too. He was like a Brahmin
and I think in his view of it, and it's
become sort of more egalitarian. Fascism in the modern era
but like initially there was like a very strict like
racial hierarchy within Hinduism too. I think that's less of

(25:25):
a factor now, but I'm not an expert on it um.
Another early RSS leader, Ms. Goldwal Car, was nicknamed the
Guru of Hate. He was another big Hitler fan. In
his nineteen thirty nine book We Are Nationhood, defined a
seminal RSS text, he wrote this, something amazing about being
the Guru of Hate. It's like it's like any pepitone's
the bit or Buddha, you know. I mean, not suggesting

(25:48):
he's a Nazi. He's a very funny non Nazi comedian. Yeah,
not a Nazi, just repeating. Probably not a Nazi. Probably,
so he said this in his book German Race pride
has now become topic of the day to keep up
the purity of the race and its culture. Germany shocked
the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races,
the Jews. A good lesson for us in hindu stand

(26:09):
to learn and profit by. So it's so cool that
when my grandpa's, i mean my grandma's family was all
shot to death, it was like a really good lesson
for it was a really good lesson it. It goes
to show kind of this thing that I don't think
it's talked about enough, which is like fascism functions very
similarly to a cancer and World War two can be

(26:31):
seen as a really aggressive dose of chemo. But we
didn't fucking get at all. And that's why this is
all happening all over the world right now. Is these
little bitty like pockets of it. It's not possible to
get at all. I maybe it is. Maybe I think
there's an argument to be made about the nature of
our society and that and this will come into play
later here, and that if you live in a system

(26:53):
that is is completely dominated by by capitalism and moneyed
interests as ours is, because that's always a factor in
the rise of all these movements, is the business leaders
in those countries, even the ones that don't really like
the Fascist party, prefer it to socialism. And that's a
huge factor everywhere fascism seriously takes hold. It's just like
these rich people being like, well, I guess I prefer

(27:14):
these folks to giving up a big chunk on my fortune.
And so there's an argument to be made that if
you have a state with a strong social safety net
already in place, and with strict limits on how much
power the wealthy can exercise, it's seriously cramps the ability
of these movements to get off the ground. Um, nobody's
ever eradicated fascism from the human race, So we can't
know what the solution is. But if i'm if I'm theorizing,

(27:37):
that would be a suggestion I would make, I'll take
it under advisement. Yeah, the next time you're trying to
eliminate fascism, maybe give that a shot. Not all the
way in, but I'll think about it. Well, it's all
on you specifically, so I hope you do. But yeah,
as you know, people have been waiting for me to
eliminate FACI. Yeah, we're all waiting. So. Another one of

(28:01):
the founders of the RSS was a guy named hedge War,
and he deliberately patterned the RSS after the fascist parties
he'd watched rise to power in Germany and Italy. Hedgewar
addressed his stormtroopers and khaki uniforms patterned off Mussolini's fascists.
He marched them through the street and an Indian equivalent
to the goose step, and he gave them like a
weird little salute that's like kind of like a modified

(28:22):
Hitler salute that they still do to this day, modified
in which way. Um, if you look up r SS,
well it's like a little bit less of the hand motion. Um,
just like less noticeable. What do you want me to
look at r SS salute? Yeah? Yeah, it's like it's

(28:42):
like your arm kind of like over your with like
your fist over your heart. You can sort of see
the inspiration, but it kind of looks if you do this,
it's like almost Hitler. Yeah, it's a little bit of
a of a subdued Do you have to keep your
arms straight though? Yeah? I think you have to keep
it draka. You know that has a very Hitler look.

(29:02):
It's got a hitlery look to it. Yeah. And Hedgewar's
fundamental belief was that centuries of domination by the British
Empire had emasculated the Indian man and they needed a violent,
fascist paramilitary force to restore their manly pride. So I
noticed you picked up the knife just sort of by reflex.
That's a good reflex to fascism. Um. So the RSS

(29:24):
was from the beginning profoundly anti Muslim. They preached that
India's Muslims were descended from Hindus who had been violently converted,
and thus we're not authentically Indian. Non violence and plurality
were all equally hateful to the men of the RSS,
including one Naam van Ayak Gudzi, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
After Gandhi's murder, the party was banned, but not for long.

(29:44):
The centrist powers of Indian never quite succeeded in wiping
it out, and as a result, it hung out in
the margins of political society for years, waiting for the
right time to re emerge. Bit by bit, it grew
to hold influence over ever greater swaths of Indian society.
In two thousand and four, the Gujarat State Bore issued
textbooks that described Adolf Hitler as a hero, with social
study textbook chapter titles like Hitler, the Supremo and Internal

(30:08):
Achievements of Nazism One Secure Supremo. What a bad breakfast sandwich? Yeah,
that does sound like a terrible It's like a lot
of hair and it just mustaches. Yeah, it's mostly like
really greasy pork and like boiled eggs. Yeah, greasy pork
and boiled eggs. Is the supremo Hitler. Yeah, yeah, the

(30:29):
mustaches and let us. Yeah, it's like, I mean, I'd
prefer it to subway, but not by much. And it's
less fascist than subway, but not by much. Subway. If
you sponsor our show, I'll take all this back and
we will eat fresh seriously. So yeah. From that social

(30:50):
study textbook, there's a section called Ideology of Nazism, and
in that chapter it notes quote Hitler lit dignity and
prestige to the German government. He adopted the polity of
opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of
the German race. So you can kind to see something
happening here. Yeah. Sympathizers in the state of Tamil Nadu

(31:10):
succeeded in sliding pro Nazi messages into a tenth grade
social studies textbook in two thousand eleven, including chapters praising
Hitler's inspiring leadership achievements and how the Nazis only ordered
the persecution of the Jews in order to maintain a
German race with Nordic elements. Nordic elements, so that's good.
In two twelve tenth grade students at a private school

(31:30):
in Mumbai were asked to complete a sentence starting with
the words I admire. Nine of the students in that
class picked Hitler. A two two pole conducted by the
Times of India found that seventeen percent of respondents listed
Hitler as the kind of leader India ought to have. So,
given all that, it would be fair to say that
India's issues with Nazism go just a scouche behind simple

(31:52):
ignorance of history. It would, in fact be fair to
say that a number of very motivated people have spent
decades attempting to mainstream Nazi idology and pushed the ideals
of fascism on the people of the world's largest democracy.
And it would furthermore be fair to say that those
same very motivated people have seen terrifying success. No individual
has seen more success with this than Narindra Moody, the

(32:13):
current Prime Minister of India and the man who was
governor of Gurot in two thousand four when the province
added that pro Hitler curriculum to X textbooks. So we're
gonna talk about Moody now. Now now we're into the past. NiFe,
good that's the right response. Oh look, he let me
call it my knife. What's up now, my knife? I'm

(32:34):
kindly stroking my knife. Is the coolest ever all day. Yeah,
let's let's get a couple of knives. More knives in here.
Sophie Narendra Modi was born in Vanegar, a small town
in North guj rots Mansana district, on September seventeenth, nineteen fifty.
He was the sixth of the third of six children,
and he was not born into wealcare privilege. His family

(32:54):
was of the Ganchi cast, which put them about as
low on the cultural totem pole as one could go
without literally being an outcast. Traditionally, members of this cast
pressed vegetable oil for a living, but Narindra's father supported
his family by running a small chi shop at a
local railway station. The Moody family were incredibly poor and
lived together in a forty by twelve foot single story house.
When Narindraw was old enough, he worked at his father's

(33:16):
tea shop to help support the family. He would get
up early to work alongside his dad and then cross
the train tracks to head to school later in the morning.
The modern political propaganda around Moody often emphasizes the fact
that he is unmarried and chased, essentially portraying him as
something of a monk dedicated purely to his work on
behalf of India, a man who sacrificed even love for
the love of his country. As we know, being chased

(33:38):
doesn't always work up. Actually, it can be a real problem.
Maybe some people. Yeah, people should just suck maybe um.
But this whole like presenting himself as like a chased monk,
it does kind of keeps with a broad trended propaganda
around mode. For example, this is how his website Narindra
Moody dot Ian describes his childhood. As a child, Narindra

(33:59):
Moody balance to studies, non academic life and his contribution
to the family tea stall. His schoolmates were calling a
Reindra as a diligent student with a penchant for debating
and reading. He would spend hours and hours reading in
the school library. Among the sports, he was very fond
of swimming. Nourindramodi had a wide range of friends from
all the communities. As a child, he often celebrated both
Hindu and Muslim festivals. Considering the large number of Muslim

(34:20):
friends he had in the neighborhood. Yet his thoughts and
his dreams went way beyond a conventional life that began
in the classroom and ended in the environs of an office.
He wanted to go out there and make a difference
to society, to wipe tears and suffering among people. At
a young age, he developed an inclination towards renunciation and asceticism.
He gave up eating salt, chili's oil, and jaggery. So
that's kind of how he's portrayed in his official propaganda, right,

(34:42):
So they also he hit tons of Hindu or Muslim friends.
He's not racist, and so dude, if your God doesn't
want you to eat chili's, abandon your God. It's not
that because like obviously chilies are like a traditional Hindu food.
It's this idea that like, um, that they are better
than people because you don't need chilies, that because you

(35:04):
sacrifice comforts of the flesh, you're a holy man. Like
that's kind of what make and that's not just Hinduism.
That's like a huge and Christianity and Islam. Like this
idea of what I'm saying, if you're not fucking at
least have chilies. If you're not fucking at least have chilies.
You don't have hot sauce. What do you even have
that's a T shirt? You're not fucking you have some chilies. Yeah,

(35:25):
you gotta anyway chilies or fucking ideally both to avoid fascism. Yeah.
Uh so. It was, however, revealed during his first campaign
for Prime minister that Narendra was legally married and had
been virtually his entire life. Uh, he was like married
as a child. The couple actually moved in together at
the age of seventeen, but the only cohabited for three months.

(35:46):
The Narendra abandoned his wife to wander around him Alayan
mountains on a pilgrimage and he never returned to death
draws part just kidding, No, until I wander away forever.
It's it's a little bit weirder than that because I
can't put this on Narendra because he didn't get to
choose to marry his wife. It was like, um his
family because his family was very traditional UM and they

(36:09):
thought that like they should um do kind of the
traditional thing for people in their culture, which was like
you marry off the kid pretty young. Like it was
an arranged marriage sort of thing, and so like this
partner was picked for him when he was three or
four and they were just like engaged to be married.
And then at seventeen, they moved in together and he
kind of immediately knew, like, I don't want this life,

(36:29):
and so he left. And I can't really put I mean,
I can put the whole becoming like a fascist on him,
but deciding that you don't want to marry this person
your parents hooked you up with when you were like four,
that that can't be on him. How did his wife
feel though? I don't know. Yeah, but that's I mean,
I can't blame him for like not wanting to be
married when he didn't choose to get married. I'm sure

(36:51):
she didn't want it either, but she was just trying
to play along for a second. And I don't know
what happened to her. I don't know that anybody does. Okay, good,
we should research that. That would be X time to know. Yeah.
So anyway, what I'm getting out is that, like, this
guy's backstory is a little bit complicated, and we don't
have like a really clear idea of how he spent
his youth or his childhood. We have a lot of

(37:12):
propaganda in a few bits of like hard facts that
are sprinkled in here and there. Um yeah, so it's
it's weird, um or not weird. It's just it's not
what we're used to. And it's hard to like, like
a lot of this is hard to kind of square
with the way things are in the US. Like here
in the US, like politicians are supposed to be like
family men and like to the point where like our

(37:34):
current president literally bragged about his dick size during a
major political debate. And it's kind of hard as an
American to get your head around somebody bragging that, like
I don't fuck, I have no partner, and like I
don't bone at all. But no, I get that it
makes you folier than other people exactly. Yeah, and in
it kind of positions to come, yeah, I don't, I

(37:56):
don't for me coming as politics and that's it's just different. Um. So.
Nourendra's childhood coincided with an interesting time in Indian politics.
The Congress Party, the party of Gandhi, basically held power
for the first fifty years of his life. They stood
for a sec for secular democratic values and were directly
opposed to the R s S. As you might expect

(38:17):
from a violent fascist movement, The R excess was initially
RSS was initially a high cast endeavor organized by wealthy men,
but in order to expand their membership base after the
partition of India, the RSS quickly found itself recruiting new
members of lower casts, and one of those recruits was
a young boy named Narendra Modi. It's hard to say
when he first got involved with the R S S.
I've heard some sources that claim he was eight or

(38:38):
nine years old when they when they went with him.
That's real fucking early. Yeah. His official biographies don't agree
with this, and they state that he was like after
he went on pilgrimage to the Himalayas, that he came
back and he joined the RSS. We don't know, um.
The official biographies talk about I don't know, you know,

(38:59):
stuff like we when he was nine years old, there
was flooding in a river and he built a food
stall to donate the proceeds to relief work um. And
that during a war with Pakistan and his youth he
engaged in acts of charity, serving tea to soldiers passing
through the railway station. That's what they focused on the
official biography, that he's like this very patriotic kid who
dedicates a lot of his time and effort to helping
his fellow hindus um. And it's entirely possible that if

(39:22):
he did any of this stuff, it was actually at
the behest of the RSS, and he was doing it
as like a child activist. I really don't know. It's
kind of impossible to tell whatever the precise truth. We
know that at age seventeen, Narindra abandoned his wife and
left on a pilgrimage of spiritual enlightenment. When he came back,
he set up a tea card at a bus stand
to make ends meet and began working for the RSS
in a in an official capacity as a procharek, which

(39:45):
was essentially a street propagandist. So the holler at his
wife when he got back, I don't think so. I
don't think they saw each other again. He has come
by and say like, hey, it's gonna be weird. I'm
selling tea in town. I'm back. You know, I'm sorry,
I'm kind of a dick, but probably you don't want
to be with me anyway. So this is for the best.

(40:05):
But if you see me in town slinging t to
the Nazis, don't don't feel weird about it. Don't make
it weird. I have to say, I've never fucked, so
this is critical for me. So it may not have
he he might be completely honest about the whole chasteness thing.

(40:25):
Like well, it's kind of hard to tell because it's
hard to get like a real hint of what the
man is. But he might actually be like a no
nuts sort of dude, like like really committed to that
proud boy don't come sort of sort of thing fascist
hate coming. I know it's so so um. Yeah. He

(40:47):
starts work as a protarch, which is basically like a
street propagandist, like he's giving speeches and stuff to try
to like rile people up and get them involved in
this nationalist movement and really teaches him how to like
stir up a crowd and work one Um and Paris
Moody were expected to remain chased, living like monks and
dedicating their every waking hour to the party. So when
Moody was not delivering speeches and spreading the RSS gospel

(41:08):
of intolerance against non Hindu's he cleaned out the living
quarters of senior RSS officials. In interviews today, Moody claims
that finding the RSS basically saved his life. Quote, I
got the inspiration to live for the nation from the RSS.
I learned to live for others and not for myself.
I owe it all to the r s S. So
fascist parties like the RSS de facto idolized the military,

(41:30):
and leaders in such organizations either have to have a
military background of their own or like as we saw
with people like Hitler and Mussolini, or they need to
come up with a very good excuse as to why
they did not serve that still reinforces their bona fides
as like a lover of the military. I was busy,
not fucking. I was busy to not to the military.
You got the military. Um. We kind of see this

(41:53):
with Trump's bones spurs and in his bizarre insistence that
the time he spent in the military school was essentially
the same as being in the military. You've got to
find a way to like kind of connect yourself to
the military if you're going to be this sort of
authoritarian strong man. And Moody never served, but his biography
really tries to thread that needle, and I'm gonna quote
from it right now. As a child, Narendra Moody had

(42:14):
one dream to serve in the Indian Army. For many
youngsters of his time, the army was seen as the
ultimate means of serving Mother India. As luck would have it,
his family was dead opposed to the idea. Nourindra Moody
was very keen to study in Sinic School located a
near by jem Nagar, but when the time came to
pay the feest, there was no money at home. Surely,
Narindra was disappointed, But fate had different plans for this

(42:34):
young boy who was disappointed on not being able to
wear the uniform of a Jawana soldier. Over the years,
he embarked on a unique path that took him across
India in pursuit of the larger mission to serve humanity.
So he wanted to be a soldier, but like, they
couldn't make the funding workout and stuff, and thankfully he
found another way to serve. That's just like being a soldier,
but doesn't risk him getting shot in a border war

(42:56):
with Pakistan. So that's cool. So just like though, just
like that it's the same. It's the same, only he
doesn't die anonymously in a trench being ordered to charge
a machine Gunness, that is very same. It is the same,
exactly the same, but very fortunate for him. So in
nineteen seventy five, when Moody was twenty five years old,

(43:16):
India went through a period of economic collapse in the
attendant civil and rest that comes with it. The RSS
saw this as an opportunity to recruit and to stir
up dissent against the ruling Congress Party. Prime Minister in
Dera Gandhi responded to all this by suspending parliament and
instituting emergency rule, a widely unpopular and a legal move
that was rightly condemned by many. During her time as
de facto dictator, Indira Gandhi had RSS leaders arrested and persecuted,

(43:40):
and the organization itself was banned. Moody went into hiding
at this time, dressing as a seek in a turban
and what appears to be a fake beard. I've got
a picture of him in disguise, and I'm almost certain
that that's a costume piece he's wearing. Let me see
the beard. Look at that it's a little line on
there that makes it look like it's a fake wed
or he's just like got like a thick version of

(44:01):
a chin strap. Going. Yeah, I can't really say for
certain if it is a fake beard or not, but
it's the only question that it's a wild choice either way.
I think the mustaches, you can see the tape. Yeah,
it's weird. It's a weird look. Sunglasses help, Yeah, they
do help. I mean it's not a bad he just
couldn't grow a beard or he has one now I

(44:22):
think so, like what the dude, I mean, he was
younger then some minute, takes a while before it comes time. Yeah,
I'll accept that. So. Indira Gandhi's period of emergency rule
eventually ended and the RSS was unbanned, and rather than
being harmed by their period of persecution, Gandhi's targeting of
the group legitimized in the eyes of many Indians who
had not identified with the organization previously. The RSS began

(44:43):
to grow and the loyal and Narindric Moody moved up
the ranks quickly. In nine seven, he joined the Janata
Party or b j P, and the b j P
is the electorally political also a member of the b
j P. What's up, dude. That is sorry, yeah, but
it's the In this case, the b j P is

(45:05):
the electorally political wing of the RSS. You don't got
to tell me about the b j Robert's uncomfortable. It's great,
you can all join blushed the JP. That is so cute.
Lord in Heaven, you're adorable. You know what else is
adorable and pro blow job. That's that's exactly right. All

(45:29):
of these companies will blow you in the capitalistic sense
by sending you products in exchange for currency. We're back.
So uh. Moody has just joined the b j P UM,
which is the political wing of the RSS. And he
started at the bottom of the party, but his skill

(45:50):
as an organizer ensured that he rose rapidly. By the
nineteen eighties, he had become a senior figure in the
b JPS Gugati chapter. At the time, the b j
P was still definitely fringe. It had only two seats
in parliament. The party leadership looked out at the political
situation in India and saw that they needed a cause
to crystallize the divisions between Hindu and Muslim in the country,
and they found this cause in the city of Iodia.

(46:13):
That holy city had a mosque called the Babri Mashid
mas Jid sorry the Babri Musjid, which had been built
by the Muslim Mughal and bur Baber in fifty eight
for a variety of confusing reasons. A number of local
Hindus had grown convinced over the years that this mosque
was built over the site of an old Hindu temple,
and some of these people began to claim that ram
and Avatara Vishnu had been born on the spot. And

(46:35):
I'm going to quote now from a New Yorker article
laying out what happened next. In September nine, senior b
JP member named L. K. Advani began calling for the
Babri Musjid to be destroyed and for a Hindu temple
to take its place. To build support for the idea,
he undertook a two month pilgrimage called the ram rath
Yatra across the Indian heartland. Traveling aboard a Nissan jiep

(46:55):
refitted to look like a chariot, he sometimes gave several
speeches a day in flaming crowds about what he saw
as the government's favoritism towards Muslims. Sectarian riots followed in
his wake, leaving hundreds dead. At Vani was arrested before
he reached Iodia, but other b JP members carried on
gathering supporters and donations along the way. On December six,
a crowd led by RSS partisans swarmed the bobbary ms

(47:17):
Jed and using axes and hammers, began tearing the building down.
By nightfall it had been completely raised. So they destroyed
this mosque and uh Narindra Modi was still pretty low
on the totem pole at this point, but his skill
as an organizer earned him a place organizing the rath
Yatra that like Chariot march across the country. It was
his job to organize the Gujrat section of the Chariot March,

(47:39):
and the ram Yatha sparked a series of horrifically bloody
Hindew Muslim riots all across the subcontinent. The violence took
weeks to die down, and it was particularly bad in Mumbai,
one of India's largest cities. Muslims were forced either by
mobs or by basic self preservation to move out of neighborhoods.
Their families had occupied for generations. Many moved into what
we're effectively ghettos. The riots and dislow casion caused by

(48:00):
the ram Rath Theatra's aftershocks contributed to the growing violent
polarization of Indian society. One survivor the New Yorker interviewed
reported feeling as if Mumbai had been transformed by all this.
That is the first time I ever really thought about
my identity, our entire neighborhood, our friends were going to
kill us, and all this was fucking bank for the RSS.

(48:20):
By nine years after Moodi joined, the b j P
had grown to become the single largest party in Parliament.
As it ever does, the rioting and racial hatred sparked
by this fascist organization convinced more people to join it.
As they grew to consume the Indian political system, a
few forward thinking academics began to study the party and
its members. One of these was Ashish Nandi, and I'm

(48:41):
gonna quote again from The New Yorker here, a trained psychologist,
he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists.
One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was
then a little known b JP functionary Nandi interviewed Modi
for several hours and came away shaken. His subject, Nandi
told me, exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality, puritanical, rigid,
a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and

(49:03):
an enormous ego that protected annawing and security. During an interview,
Moody elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the
target of a global conspiracy in which every Muslim in
the country was likely complicit. Moody was a fascist in
every sense. Nandy said, I don't mean this as a
term of abuse. It's a diagnostic category. Cool and good

(49:23):
the only diagnostics that I'm sorry, it's just just going
to come back to the b j P. Sometimes all
you can do is laugh about blow jobs when you're
talking about fascism, because they hate blow jobs. It's a
diagnostic category, That's what she said. Yeah, that's what That's
what this psychologist come not just being like you're a fascion.

(49:43):
I'm being like, fascism is a mental disorder when I
am diagnosing you with it. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So in
September two thousand one, a month in which nothing else
of historical import occurred. Nurindra Moody was appointed to be
the Chief Minister of the government of Gujerat, which the
rs S and b JP had begun to dominate in

(50:05):
a series of elections. Moody's rise to power was not
due to his own electoral success though um. It was
due to basically his ability to politic internally, and he
basically undermined another rival of his and the v j P,
a guy named Keshubai Patel. I am so sorry about
the names here. You know me, yes, yes, yes, uh

(50:26):
so yeah. I found a quote from a guy named
Vinod Meta, which is the former editor of an Indian
news magazine called Outlook, who remembers Mody turning up at
their office in the year two thousand with a bunch
of documents incriminating this rival of his Patel and a
scandal quote. I immediately felt this man was bad news.
There was something sinister about him and the way he spoke,
and I felt deeply uncomfortable in his presence. He complained

(50:48):
about Patel and talked about corruption. He came back a
couple of times, but I didn't run the story before
I knew what had happened. He was back at Gujrat
as the chief minister in Keshubai's place. So Narendra like
basically Fox with this other guy he sees his arrival,
succeeds in kind of maneuvering him out of power, and
he winds up as the man in charge on gat
On February two, when a passenger train stops in the

(51:10):
city of go Drop after departing from Iodia, many of
the people on board the train were Hindu pilgrims who
had been visiting the destroyed Bobary Maschi and mosque in
order to advocate the building of a Hindu temple over
its remains. Most of them were members of the RSS. Somehow,
Muslim residents of Gojra realized that this train was filled
with RSS activists and they began to shout and jeer

(51:30):
at them, and the Hindu partisans inside began to shout back.
The train stalled as it began to depart, and this
provided time for the confrontation to escalate. No one knows
exactly what happened next, but someone threw something on fire
into one of the cars, possibly like a Muslim shop
owner like Tasta stove in there. It's really not known
for certain, but one of the people in the crowd
outside saw something on fire into the into the train,

(51:53):
and I I've been on a lot of Indian trains.
They're they're incredibly crowded, and a lot of people wearing
like long flowing cotton garments and also carrying like piles
of like clothes and stuff with them, like what they
own and whatnot. And it's incredibly flammable in there, and
this catches, like members of the group inside catch and
the fire spreads, and it's just this this horrific fire,

(52:15):
and really like before anyone knows what's happening, fifty eight
people had either burned to death or suffocated on board
the train. Yeah, and blame quickly settles on Muslims in
general for this horrible tragedy. So members of the VHP,
the religious wing of the RSS, the group that most
of the people in the train had been a part of,
petition Narendra Modi for the right to parade the burnt

(52:36):
corpses of their members through the streets of the Metabot,
the largest city in Guat. What. Yeah, They're like, we wanna,
we wanna really like make the most of this tragedy.
So we want to carry the dead bodies of our
members who got burnt to death and marched them through
the city to try to like spark a fucking riot,
Like that's the goal here. Excuse me, I gotta say that,

(52:57):
you know. I was like, Oh, I'm with them, I'm
with them, They're reaving. Wait what Yeah, so I feel
like that really went quick. Yeah. Um. And the Home
Secretary of Guzerat warns Moody that allowing them to do
this will spark another violent riot, telling him things will
go out of hand. But out of hand is exactly
where Moody wanted things to go, and sure enough, he

(53:19):
allows them to march the corpses of their dead members
through the street, and this provokes mobs of furious Hindus
to take to the streets all throughout the cities of Gurot,
shouting take revenge and slaughter the Muslims. Rioters cut open
the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women and murdered babies. Hundreds
of women were gang y. Yeah, this is where we
get where that paragraph all right, Yeah, okay, touche, you

(53:40):
son of a bit. There's mask gang rapes at least
one Muslim boy is forced to drink kerosene and swallow
a lit match. It's it's bad. It's a bad set
of riots. Can you swallow a lit match? I'm no,
I'm not. I know that's not the part I should
focus on. It's not I don't think well, yeah, um
And also a member of the Congress Party as San Joffrey,

(54:02):
was caught by a crowd and publicly dismembered. So like,
these are really bad rights. By the time it's all over,
somewhere around two to three thousand people are dead, and
the vast majority of them are Muslims, and it will
will never get an exact death toll. Um. Reports began
to filter out in the immediate wake that this violence
had not been purely spontaneous, just an uncontrollable expression of rage.

(54:23):
And I'm gonna quote from the New Yorker again, they
appeared to have been largely planned and directed by the RSS.
Teams of men armed with clubs, guns, and swords fanned
out across the States Muslim enclaves, often carrying voter rolls
and other official documents that led them to Muslims homes
and shops so they get like government information on where
Muslims are living in town. To carry out this stuff

(54:43):
sounds very crystal Nocti. Yeah, Modi, the man in charge
of the Guadi government was nowhere to be found, but
his influence was felt everywhere as he ordered Indian Army
soldiers to post up in their barracks rather than intervened
to stop the violence. Police also received orders to stand down,
and in many areous they just took part in the killing.
One of the very few officers who did not go

(55:04):
along with this was Rahul Sharma, the top cop and
the heavily Muslim district of bob Nagar. He later testified
that he received no word at all from his superiors
on how to contain the riots, with which lasted more
than three months. Sharma took matters into the riots lasted
for more than three months. Yea three months of constant
street violence. Holy ship. Yeah, it's hardcore. Um, it's a

(55:27):
bad time um. And Sharma is one of like the
few heroes of this time. So he like is being
told nothing at all from his superiors, like what to
do about these murder mobs? Um. And it kind of
comes to a head when there's huge organized crowd of
rss supporters with weapons start like posting up outside a
school filled with four hundred Muslim children. Um, and he
eventually orders his cops to like fire into the crowd,

(55:48):
which is really maybe the only time I can think
of where I'm like, yeah, it's good that the police
shot at that crowd. Holy shit. But he successfully saves
all these kids. He's a good guy. He did the
right thing. Um, most police did not. The vast majority
of Guadi police let the programs continue unabated. As a
general rule, this too conforms to the standard behavior of
law enforcement during acts of ethnic cleansing all around the world.

(56:10):
The ones who do not actively participate very often sit
back and watch. So we can assume anywhere there is
ethnic cleansing occurring, the police will be a part of
it actively rather than protecting the victims. That's just true.
Multiple content for aligning. What's the opposite of a silver lining,
like a ship streak? Yeah, it's like a ship streak.
Yeah all right, yeah yeah, like a ship streak covering

(56:31):
one of those like thin blue lines. Yeah. Um. So
Sharma was shuffled out of his job and criticized by
India's Home Minister. A b JP functionary named Advani for
allowing too many Hindus to die in his district. So
like one of the few cops who like does what
you would hope a police officer due and protects the
public gets like basically fired for the fact that too

(56:51):
many Hindus died because like some of his cops had
to like shoot at Hindus to like stop them from
massacring all these school children. So in the end, two
thousand people are more were killed in three months of
horrific violence. More than a hundred and fifty thousand people,
mostly Muslims, were forced out of their homes. As with
the earlier rioting in September nineteen ninety, the Guzati riots
left a vastly more polarized state in their wake. Muslims

(57:13):
were forced out of neighborhoods they'd long inhabited and dumped
into slums for their own safety. One of these formed
in the vast garbage dump of the city of Amitabad.
Citizens Village, as it came to be known, hosted tens
of thousands of Muslim refugees. What little aid it received
was supplied by volunteers. Narendra Modi's government refused to help
when he was asked why he had abandoned these people,
who were also citizens of Guzat. Moody replied, relief camps

(57:36):
are actually child making factories. Those who keep on multiplying
the population should be taught a lesson. Wow, he's a
cool guy. Cool not coming, dude. The guzat Yots were
met with a tepid response by the Indian government. Only
a few dozen rioters were ever convicted of anything, and
only one elected official in the b j P, Maya
ben Kodnani, was ever convicted of murder and conspiracy. She

(57:59):
was cleared of all charges when Moody became the Prime minister.
So that's nice, Pretty convenient, Pretty convenient. I'm getting ahead
of myself a little bit. Though the international community was
outraged by what happened in Gurod and the RSS and Nearindra.
Moody in particular became global pariahs. Moody was banned from
travel to the United States or the United Kingdom. His
reputation suffered enough that his fellow b JP members in

(58:19):
India temporarily disavowed him. In two thousand four, the b
JP Prime Minister at all was voted out of office
and he blamed Nearindra Moody for his loss. So for
a while it seemed like the guse Roight riots, as
horrible as they were, had sounded a death knell to
Moody's career and to the RSS. But of course those
riots would prove to be only at the beginning, and

(58:40):
on Thursday's episode, we're going to talk about what came next.
But you know what it's time to talk about now.
I don't know the amazing goods and services, the amazing
plugs that you have to plug what. Yeah, we're in
the p's on UM. Me and the other members of
the b J p UM can be found on Twitter
and Instagram at the Sophia so f I y A,

(59:04):
and you can hear me on my two podcasts. One
is on iHeart with Miles Gray from Daily Say Guys
called for Twenty Day Fiance, and the other one is
Private Parts Unknown with Courtney Kosak, where we travel all
around the world and talk to people about love and
sex and sexuality. Yeah, I love Courtney, Courtney's the best love,

(59:27):
Courtney hate the growing spectr of international fascism. UM. Listen
to Sophia's podcastle on her website as a quote from you.
It is, it is. That's my only book jacket quote. Um,
so listen to those podcasts. Maybe pick up a couple
of ives, a couple of other weapons. Uh, just you know,

(59:49):
get ready for your own local ethnic cleansing mobs. Um boy, howdye, Sophie?
How do we end an episode? You can find Robert
on Twitter alright, right, okay, you can find us on
the twin Instagram and at Bastards Pod. You can find
our sources underneath the episode notes if you just scroll down. Um,

(01:00:09):
and you can listen Robert on Worst Year Ever. And
we have another project coming out very soon. Look for that. Yeah,
the Women's War March Episode one mar trailer March eighteenth,
look out for it. So, boys, Sophie, the way you
handled that was so much more responsible than just telling
the audience to arm themselves to fight against mobs of violence. Facts.

(01:00:30):
I'm here before, thank you? All right, the episode is
now over. Excellent