by Vahidha Nizam
The health wing of the RSS, Arogya Bharati, has been holding programmes to create ‘fair, tall and intelligent' babies. Tailor-made ‘designer babies', the experts of Arogya Bharati claim, can be ‘produced' using what is called ‘garbha sanskar', an ancient Indian wisdom.
The project is called ‘Garbha Vigyan Sanskar'. It is reported to have delivered 450 ‘customised babies' so far and its target is to establish a ‘Garbh Vigyan Anusandhan Kendra', a facili-tation centre in every State by the end of 2020, just three years from now.
Obviously an ambitious programme of the RSS, this was launched a decade ago in Gujarat and is taken up at the national level now, as reported by the office-bearers of the programme. Vigyan Bharati, the education wing of the RSS, assists the project which presently operates through 10 branches in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. Its expansion activities are briskly underway in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. A counselling session of the Garbha Vigyan Sanskar was held recently in Kolkata. Sessions and seminars have been held in Delhi and Mumbai and also in the smaller cities like Udupi in Karnataka, Kasargode in Kerala, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.
The shenanigans for ‘uttam santati' a perfect offspring, to create a ‘samarth Bharath' (capable India) includes, among other things, mental and physical ‘purification' of the prospective parents. In this dubious concept the man and woman are initially subjected to nadi shuddhi and deh shuddhi, whereby it is believed that the eggs of the woman and the sperms of the man are purified. The purified eggs and sperms consu-mmate to conceive the fair-complexioned, tall and intelligent child!!
After ‘shuddhikaran' the date and time, based on the planetary configuration, is prescribed to the man and woman to copulate. Complete abstinence from sex after the baby is conceived is yet another important prescription of ‘garbh vigyan'. Then the expectant mother becomes the laboratory of the ‘grabh sanskar' and has to follow all the dietary regulations—what she eats, what she wears, what music she listens, what slogans she has to chant and when—all and more is decided by the garbh sanskar. Absolutely obscurantist chicanery and patri-archy of the highest order is epitomised in this programme of the RSS. This ‘garbh vigyan' of the RSS in its simpler programme also has the prescription to conceive ‘male children', encouraging the illegal and unethical sex selection flouting the law that prohibits any pre-natal and post-natal tests. The eternal trickery of the RSS to establish and project astrology as science finds an evidence here too. This love of the RSS for a race which is of “fair” complexion is part of its ideological heritage which declares that Indians are Aryans—fair and tall; honourable and respectable; noble and speak Sanskrit. The RSS stands for Aryan supremacy and asserts that only Hindu Brahmins of North India are from that stock. The most prominent ideologue of the RSS and second supremo, M.S. Golwalkar, who openly has expressed his egregiously racist views, is quoted as saying that Namboodri Brahmins from North India were sent to Kerala “to improve the breed of Indians“. This was a part of his notorious speech to the faculty and students of the School of Social Science of Gujarat University in the year 1930.
Notoriety of the same breed, espousing this irrationality, is seen again after 87 years. Very recently this audacity-holding supremacy of fair Aryans as indigenous Indians and subse-quent hatred for ‘dark-skinned' people was expressively aired by Tarun Vijay on Al Jazeera, a global news network. In a statement that startled the world, Tarun Vijay, an ideologue of the RSS and a former MP from the BJP, was gloating with the ‘Aryan pride' when he said that they ‘coexist' with the South Indians who are dark complexioned. Tarun Vijay, ironically the President of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship Group when he was an MP, was giving an interview in Al Jazeera TV. To a direct question if the attacks on the African nationals in India were racist, the RSS man responded with this shocker that Indians are not racist, lest they would not be sharing the land with the ‘black' South Indians. This in itself was a racist remark that claims the ‘Aryan supremacy' in India. In an India that draws its proud tradition from its pluralistic culture, these are the noxiously toxic weeds that wield the mantle of governance.
The RSS bequeaths this theory of ‘Aryan supremacy' from their obsession to Nazism and mysticism, the warped philosophies of Hitler. ‘Purity' and ‘superiority' of the ‘Germanic race', which Hitler described as the ‘Super race', were developed by Nazi Germany in order to preserve the ‘superior race'. Hitler declared that this race must remain pure in order to rule the earth. This racial fascism believed that the mix of races would ‘pollute' the master genes. This required at the very least preventing the ‘inferior genes' from mixing with those judged superior in order to reduce ‘contamination' of the latter's gene pool. Nazi Germany's racially superior Aryan was blonde, blue-eyed and tall and spoke the Indo-European language. The RSS' ideology of fair and tall ‘Aryan' who speaks Sanskrit finds its roots in this racial fascism. The Ideal member of the master race in Nazi Germany was referred to as ‘Ubermensch' which literally means ‘super man' and those considered not of pure Aryan descent were ‘sub-human' referred as ‘Untermensch'. This notion of super race was created in the 19th century which posited that there is a hierarchy of races and that cultures degenerate when distinct races mix. The bottom of the hierarchy included dark-skinned indigenous people. The top of the races was the ‘ubermensch', the master race, that the Nazi's proclaimed would rule the earth in the so-called 'Thousand Year Reich'.
To ensure the genetic purity of Germany, Hitler implemented selective human breeding through the pseudo-science called ‘eugenics'. This was the brutal scientific racism that was practised by a state-sponsored programme. People of lesser races were not wanted and they were castigated as mentally and physically weak, therefore unfit to live, and were killed. These killings were the genocides that eventually led to what is called the holocaust.
Insatiable obsession for the master race led Hitler into implementing the programme of ‘Lebensborn' meaning ‘spring of life'. In this programme Norwegian blonde women were recruited to be impregnated by the German soldiers. More than 42,000 babies were produced in this programme.
The reason for my elaborate reference to ‘eugenics' and ‘Lebensborn' is not just to draw a parallel with the RSS' ‘Garbh Vigyan' project. It is to establish the fact that the RSS has been exhorted to emulate this practice by their leader, Golwalkar, and now they are out to implement it. In 1938, Madhavrao Sadashivrao Golwalkar voiced his appreciation for Adolf Hitler lauding his actions as being appropriate to “keep up the purity of the race and its culture”. Golwalkar, the ‘hate guru' as described by the 21st century historian, Ramachandra Guha, in his infamous book We or Our Nationhood Defined has noted, “Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews.” Germany, he added, “has shown how well nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by”. It is obvious that for Golwalkar, the national pride of unity in diversity is just an anathema. The ‘one language, one culture, one food and one nation' theory that the RSS professes is thus fundamentally opposed to the spirit of India.
Golwalkar's RSS, now emboldened with the evil duo Modi-Amit Shah, in its first year has implemented the ‘Garbh Vigyan Sanskar' to create uttam santati of tall “customised child”. Considering the desparate surge of the RSS to implement its ideology of Hindutva nationhood, the direct corollary is that its next move would be to attempt the racial project of ‘Lebensborn'. This may in its first glance appear to be outlandish and imaginative. No sensible Indian would even desire to imagine that the brutality of Nazi Germany, propelled by the blatant racist drive, would repeat in India. But the now omnipotent RSS, wielding its unquestioned authority over the socio-economic political spheres, threatens to bulldoze our faith that secular India cannot be blighted so badly. However, when and if this racial science finds its extreme expression, not only Muslims and Christians will be ‘exterminated' facing the lynching mobs but also most of the South Indians, who have already been declared as “Black”, would be eliminated.
The RSS has embarked upon the most ambitious project of scientific racism. They use ostensibly pseudo-scientific techniques and hypothesis to support their belief of racial superiority. The RSS and Hindutva outfits have a penchat for dubious science. This has in many incidences manifested chauvinism and chauvi-nistic overreach that even took lives. But this project for uttam santati will have the most dangerous and ugliest provenance that could write the elegy to Indian pluralism. This attempt of the RSS and its Sangh Parivar has to be defeated before it spreads and fructifies.
Vahida Nizam is the Secretary, AITUC.