A significant announcement in an English national daily recently to the effect that the ”RSS wing has a prescription for fair, tall ‘custo-mised' babies”1 is a startling disclosure, com-parable to a secret project undertaken by the Nazi regime in Germany under the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. This has no parallel with the potential to provoke craze in millions of Indian hearts at home and abroad. According to the Hindutva outfit's subsidiary Arogya Bharati, its health wing, a woman could deliver an “uttam santati”—a perfect, “customised child” or ‘uttam santati' under the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project. If the claims of Arogya Bharati are to be taken at all seriously then Albert Eisenstein, Shakes-peare, Rabindranath Tagore, Abraham Lincoln, Kalidas, Aristotle and their likes would emerge from their huts of unknown hamlets. The project, shrouded in mystery, holds the promise for miracles. And miracles are always scientifically unverifiable, open to abuses with deception and depravity and deplorable consequences in their train.
Arogya Bharati lays total emphasis for success on ‘procedure'. “If the proper procedure is followed, babies of dark-skinned parents with lesser height can have fair complexion and grow untold taller.”2 This is the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project of the RSS, which, sadly, is not known to stand scientific investigation or experiment. The RSS has jumped into a very sensitive area of human life. The result, we may apprehend, is likely to be awe-striking and unfortunate. Arogya Bharati plans to set up an Anusandhan Kendra, a facilitation centre, in every State by 2020. An expectant mother will be under obligation, for the desired result, to chant “shlokas and mantras”.3 With a decade of experiment, Guajarat has proudly marched ahead over other States and claims to have 450 such ‘customised babies'. In an era of technology and innovation, pre-fabrication of human child, having regard for specification, complexion, height and IQ to suit the parents' needs and fancies is no more hypothetical. For a nation of one-and-a-quarter billion population, the project holds boundless potential. We must, however, not be under any delusion that the so-called chants of “shlokas and mantras” will occupy the centre-stage in the project. Therefore the so-called “shlokas and mantras” might turn out to be sources of stinking nuisance, immorality and license for the deception of credulous masses. How it will do so only time will unfold.
Nazi Germany's experiment with the Lebens-born project was a disgraceful historical experi-ment. What is Lebensborn? Hitler's Germany, like the RSS' designer child, had formulated the Lebensborn project. On December 12, 1935 Hitler's most trusted Heinrich Himmler (October 7, 1900-May 23, 1945), founded the Lebensborn project, which implied the wellspring of life or fountain of life. Himmler was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), chief of the German Police, a military commander and a leading member of the Nazi Party. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, SS is the abbreviation of Schutzstaffel (German: “Protective Echelon”), the black-uni-formed elite corps and self-described “political soldiers” of the Nazi Party founded by Adolf Hitler in April 1925 as a small group personal bodyguards. The infamous SS grew with the success of the Nazi movement and, gathering immense police, and military powers, became virtually a “state within a state”. SS was plainly a gigantic evil personified.
Himmler, Mastermind of Lebensborn
To understand the anatomy of Lebensborn, it is clarified that Himmler was the father of the “most secret and terrifying” project. On Hitler's behalf, Himmler built extermination camps. As facilitator and overseer of the concentration camps, Himmler presided over the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani (gypsy) people, and other victims, aggregating eleven to fourteen million civilians—mostly Polish and Soviet. The secret project, though, simply involved extraordinary genetic engineering that tinkered for accomp-lishing a demographic miracle. By a law enacted in 1935, the Nazi regime outlawed inter-marriages between Jews and other races. For decades, Germany's birthrate declined unabated. Himmler's goal was to reverse the decline and increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany to 120 million. “Himmler encouraged SS and Wermacht officers to have children with Aryan women. He believed Lebensborn children would grow up to lead a Nazi-Aryan nation.”4
The Lebensborn programme (1935-45) was implemented under a registered society, titled ‘Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein'. It offered to young girls, who were deemed “racially pure”, the opportunity to give birth to a child in secret. The child was then given to the SS organisation which took charge of the child's education and adoption. Both mother and father needed to pass a “racial purity” test. Blond hair and blue eyes were preferred, and family lineage had to be traced back at least three generations. Of all the women who applied, only 40 per cent passed the racial purity test and were granted admission to the Lebensborn programme. The majority of mothers were unmarried, 57.6 per cent until 1939, and about 70 per cent by 1940.5
The first Lebensborn home was inaugurated in 1936 in a tiny village near Munich. Furnishings for the homes, interestingly, were supplied from the best of the loot from the homes of Jews who, to the Nazi regime, were inferior or extremely hateful. There were 10 Lebensborn homes established in Germany, nine in Norway, two in Austria, and one each in Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France, and Denmark. Himmler himself took a special interest in the homes, choosing not only the mothers, but also attending to the decor and even paying special attention to children born on his birthday, October 7. The couples were mostly, if not entirely, unknown to each other and never ever knew the whereabouts of their child born in secrecy! Himmler himself had fathered two Lebensborn children. Nobody with the right frame of mind is proud of the regime, which had brought unmitigable catastrophe for human civilisation.
Did India overlook the Initiative for Lebensborn?
In 1994 T.N. Seshan, the then Chief Election Commissioner, in an address to the American Alumni Association in Bombay, spoke of a dream project for a “superman”. Cross-fertilisation of Indians and Americans, the Chief Election Commissioner emphasised, would give “birth to the best breeds in world”.6 Sadly, not many took notice of his revolutionary concept.
The Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project, with its emphasis on designable babies with fair complexion and high IQ, is likely to have many notable protagonists and patrons. Recently India got a peep into the racism and complexion-fixation of an apparatchik from a sensational television programme. A well-educated Member of Parlia-ment told the Al Jazeera that
“If we [Indians] were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Which is, you know, completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why do we live with them [if we are racist]? We have blacks, black people around us. You are denying your own nation, you are denying your ancestry, and you are denying your culture.”7
Unmixed racism, though the racists do not acknowledge its liability. This was Tarun Vijay whose credentials are impeccable, if not awe-inspiring. Tarun has been the editor of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's weekly, Pancha-janya, for the last 20 long years. He is the President of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group.8
Philosopher's Perception of Eugenics
The Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project for “uttam santati”—a perfect “customised child”—places India on the threshold of an eugenic revolution. We may here recall with benefit Dr S. Radha-krishnan who cited an illustration of a soldier who fought a revolutionary war, involving Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies comprising the USA, to victory and ultimate independence. A young soldier, Martin Kallakal, who inherited the noble blood of excellent ancestry, had married a girl who was ‘physically attractive' but ‘feeble-minded'. The result was the birth of a ‘feeble-minded boy'. The son of Martin married a woman who was apparently of “the same low stock as himself”. So an army of 134 feeble-minded descendants—33 immoral, 36 illegitimate, three epileptics, three criminals and eight brothel keepers—traced their ancestry to Martin Kallak. Later a repentant Martin married a Quaker woman of splendid talents and noble ancestry. The union boasted of 496 descendants who included Governors, soldiers, founders of great university, doctors, lawyers, judges, landholders, useful citizens and admirable parents prominent in every phase of social life.9
The celebrated Indian philosopher has under-lined that the anuloma and pratiloma marriage practice in Hindu society helped regulate “the tendency to indiscriminate crossing” of men and women.10 Nevertheless, we have the example of the Bengal King, Ballal Sen, who instituted kulinism. John Wilson, the first Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University, stated in his Indian Caste (1877) that an illegitimate son of Ballal and his Brahman concubine was vested with kulinism, called Pandit Ratni, the jewel of scholars. Other Bengali kulins descended from five Brahmans imported by King Adisur from Kannauj in 10th century AD.11 Ballal, a Baidya by caste, was Sudra. Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee belonged to the Pandit Ratni clan. Educated in England, he was a leading lawyer of the Calcutta High Court. As a political leader, Bonnerjee was the founder-President of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Multiple illustrations on either side can be cited. Hindu scriptures regard issues of mixed birth as sinful.
Till 1939, the secret Lebensborn project did not yield results to cheer Himmler who, we have noted already, was into fathering bastards. He issued a direct order to all SS and police officers to father as many children as possible to compensate for the war casualties triggering off a controversy. Many Germans felt the acceptance of unwed mothers encouraged immorality. Eventually Himmler retraced his step but he never condemned illegitimacy outright.
Lebensborn soon started embracing non-German mothers. In 1942, Hitler formulated a policy that encouraged German soldiers to fraternise with native women, with a promise that any children they produced would be provided for. Racially fit women, most often the girlfriends or one-night stands of SS officers, were invited to Lebensborn homes to have their child in privacy and safety.
Gaumata: India's first Ambassador at large;
How Gujarati Gaumata became Global Favourite
The Times of India sometime back alarmed the Indian conscience by a story aimed at causing discrimi-nation among gaumata, under the caption ‘Ignore firang breeds; only Indian cows can be Mata'. A hoarding at a vintage location outside the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) office by Bansari Gaushala in Bakrol appealed to devotees to feed only Indian cows as a ritual. “The Indian Gau Matas' milk, urine, dung are holy. Recent scientific research has shown how cow urine has gold. Besides this, cow milk has A2 proteins which is safe for health,” the message on the banner read.12
Let us now talk about the history of the gau-mata's odyssey into the global orbit from Gujarat. The most committed devotees might have forgot about it. She is now a celebrity everywhere. Some five decades ago Prof Dr Hilton Marshall Briggs of the South Dakota State University, USA, wrote that the first Indian cattle were imported in 1849 by Dr James Bolton Davis of Fairfield County, South Carolina. Davis was the agricultural advisor to the Sultan of Turkey and became acquainted with the Bos indicus cattle then. Although the descendants of these cattle were spread widely throughout South America, their complete identity was lost during the Civil War. Two Indian bulls were given to Richard Barrow, a cotton and sugar planter of St Francisville, LA, in 1854, by the British Crown in recognition of Mr Barrow's services of teaching cotton and sugarcane culture to a British representative bound for India to take these arts there. The offspring of these cattle became known as “Barrow Grade” cattle. The success of these two animals led to the import of two more Indian bulls in 1885 by J.M. Frost and Albert Montgomery of Houston, Texas. By mating these two bulls to the offspring of the Barrow bulls, the first attempt to concentrate the blood of Bos indicus cattle in the United States was undertaken. In 1905 and 1906, the Pierce Ranch of Pierce, Texas, assisted by Thomas M. O'Connor of Victoria, Texas, imported thirty bulls and three females of several Indian types.
Remarkable Role of American Brahman Breeders Association
In 1923-24, 90 bulls of the Gujarat, Gir and Nellore types were imported from Brazil. In 1925, another batch of cattle comprising 120 bulls and 18 females from Brazil reached the USA. This information was furnished to Prof Briggs by the American Brahman Breeders' Association (acronymed ABBA) for his remarkable work, Modern Breeds of Livestock. The ABBA was founded in 1924. The first secretary of the Association, J.W. Sartwelle of Houston, proposed the word “Brahman” and so it was adopted as the name of the new beef breed.13 An era of revolution in beef industry began thereby.
Well-defined breeds of cattle in India, according to the ABBA, number thirty. Three principal strains or varieties, brought to the United States and used in the development of the Brahman breed, are the Gujarat, the Nellore, and Gir. The Krishna Valley strain too was introduced in the USA. American Brahman cattle, the first beef breed developed in the US, rank #1 in hybrid vigour, heat tolerance and efficiency compared to all other beef breeds. With improved growth and performance, Brahman cattle increase the profitability and play an important role in crossbreeding programmes worldwide. The Brahman cattle are the common thread connecting other American breeds developed in the last (nineteenth) century. The American Brahman influence in the beef industry is felt worldwide, and their genetics are sought by cattlemen in every continent. Their development is a success story without parallel. Today's cattlemen breed Brahmans for all the right reasons.14
Benefits of Super Cow
Why do the descendants of cows imported in America receive such full-throated applause globally? Prof Briggs stated that “The Brahman Cow on average in the United States can produce about 21,000 lbs (9525 kg) of milk in one year, that's about 2500 gallons (9463 liter) a year, and for the time of its life on earth, a Brahman Cow can produce about 200,000 glasses of milk. A 1000 pound cow in a year can make about 10 tons of manure..”15
These superb economic contributions can rarely be overemphasised. Above all, there is another aspect that is capable of connecting her to the security establishments of any nation. The ABBA claims that “Brahman Cows can smell something up to 6 miles (9.65 kilometre) away, they have superior sense of smell”.16 Undoubtedly, this is an extraordinary quality of the cow. Besides the utilities aforementioned, the animal, if trained properly, I guess, can be harnessed, with huge benefit, in the service of intelligence and security at a time when the world is under serious threats of extremism from various corners.
In the Ministry and Department of Science and Technology of the Union Government, according to a recent news, a national steering committee has been set up to guide research to assess the many claimed virtues of Panchgavya, a traditional concoction of cow dung, urine, milk, curd and ghee, water and three other ingredients.17
A huge possibility will open up before the country if researches vindicate the claims some sections in India make. But do we still feign to ignore the gaumata making and breaking records offshore as firang with no recognition at her ancestral holy home?
Footnotes
1. The Indian Express, May 7, 2017.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Nazi Party: The Lebensborn Programme (1935-45) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-quot-lebensborn-quot-program
5. Ibid. Nazi Party: The Lebensborn Programme (1935-45) https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-quot-lebensborn-quot-program
6. The Times of India, New Delhi, August 8, 1994.
7. Daily O, April 7, 2017.
8. Ibid.
9. S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life, Fourth Impression, May 1965, p. l73 quoted by A.K. Biswas in ‘Shesan's superman doctrine', Mainstream, vol. XXXIII no. 34, July 15, 1995.
10. Ibid.
11. Historians consider Adisur as fictitious. But the long shadow of this fictitious king lingers over Bengalis even now.
12. The Times of India, July 7, 2016.
13. https://www.brahman.org/about/American Brahman
14. https://www.brahman.org/about/American Brahman
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. The Telegraph, Calcutta, “...dung validated by science”, May 18, 2017.
The author, a retired IAS officer and former Vice-Chancellor, B.R. Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur (Bihar), can be reached at biswasatulk[at]gmail.com