German Ambassador to India Walter Lindner praising RSS and calling it National Movement and Indian Mosaic may put him in troubled waters as people are crying foul over his good words regarding RSS when there are so many incidents of hate crime are being reported everyday which root cause lies somewhere in the RSS ideology that it has been spreading since its foundation.
German Ambassador Walter met RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at its Nagpur based headquarter and praised the organisation which is supposed to be modelling after Adolf Hitler’s principles of Nationalism.
Pieter Friedrich, a South Asian Affairs Analyst has filed an online petition and asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to intervene and either ask Walter to resign or terminate him from the post.
“On July 17, 2019, Ambassador Walter Lindner (Germany’s ambassador to India) visited the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Nagpur, Maharashtra. His visit condones the RSS paramilitary as well as its ideological and institutional inspiration by European fascist movements like those of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy,” the petitioner said in his petition.
The petitioner cites many reasons why Walter should not meet the RSS chief whose organisation spreads nationalism based on Adolf Hitler’s principles that had ruined the country during second world war.
According to the petitioner, Golwalkar believed that being Indian meant being Hindu. So he wrote, “Only the Hindu has been living here as the child of this soil. We repeat: in Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu Nation.”
“The only true Indian “patriots” were people who aspired to “glorify the Hindu race and Nation. All others are… traitors and enemies to the National cause,” he quoted Golwalkar as saying.
Golwalkar called it “treason” for an Indian to convert away from Hinduism, writing, “It is not merely a case of change of faith, but a change even in national identity. What else is it, if not treason, to join the camp of the enemy?””
Mentioning about Nazi’s movement in Germany, he said “In 1935, the Nazis began redefining “national identity” in Germany when they passed the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jews of citizenship and banning relationships between Germans and Jews. This was followed in 1938 by Kristallnacht, the first Nazi pogrom against Jews.”
“The foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge into the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights,” thus Golwarkar wanted to make India an ethnostate, wrote Friedrich.
“Germany must in no way demonstrate any tolerance for fascism, especially for fascist movements like the RSS which have a demonstrated record of admiring and seeking to model themselves after Nazi Germany and other affiliated fascist movements,” he concluded.
Friedrich urged people to sign the petition and request German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to intervene and ask Walter to resign from the post or recall him.
An appeal to you to sign the petition demanding Germany’s ambassador to India, #WalterLindner, resign (or be recalled) for fraternizing w/RSS & being pictured w/Nazi supporter Golwalkar. In memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
Please sign & share. https://t.co/DieUEbojdu pic.twitter.com/FuxrbMLGmV
— Pieter Friedrich (@FriedrichPieter) July 20, 2019
Online petition by Pieter is getting momentum and more than 1500 people have signed by the time of writing this piece.
