Human cross-breeding: Sanghi Style

Sankara Narayanan

Social reformers taught us that the caste system and the inequalities based on it were required to be demolished. But this is not acceptable to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It firmly believes in the caste system. It also believes in the prevalence of superior and inferior races among Indians.

Addressing the students of the Gujarat University in Dec, 1960, M S Golwalkar (the ideological Guru of the RSS) observed, "It was through varna system that a great effort to control possessiveness could be made. In society some people are intellectuals, some expert in production and earning of wealth and some have the capacity to labour. The Varna system is a proper co-ordination of these divisions and an enabling of the individual to serve the society to the best of his ability through a hereditary development of the functions for which he is best suited."

Golwalkar in his book ‘Bunch of Thoughts’ (1966) again defended the caste system. He said, “The Brahmin was considered great because he was the purveyor of knowledge. The Kshatriya was considered equally great because he destroyed the enemies. The Vaishya was no less important than others because through agriculture and commerce he fulfilled a social need. The Sudra too was important for he served society through his workmanship.” But Chanakya’s Arthashastra clearly states that it is the religious duty of the Sudras to serve the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. In a clever subterfuge, Golwalkar replaces service of the upper castes with “service of society”.

In the course of his speech in the Gujarat University, Golwalkar said, "We make experiments in cross-breeding only on animals. Our ancestors made daring experiments in the sphere of human cross-breeding. In an effort to better the human species through cross-breeding, the Namboodiri Brahamanas of the North were settled in Kerala. A courageous rule was made that the first off-spring of a married woman of any class must be fathered by a Namboodri Brahman and then she could beget children by her husband." The RSS mouthpiece Organiser had published the full text of that sham speech in its Jan 2, 1961 issue.

Golwalkar’s views stamp racism, feudalism and male chauvinism. He believes India has a superior race and also an inferior race which needed to be improved through cross-breeding. Brahmans of the North and specially Namboodri Brahamans, belonged to a superior race. Due to this quality, Namboodiri Brahamanas were sent from the North to Kerala to improve the breed of inferior Hindus there. For him, wombs of Kerala’s Hindu women enjoyed no sanctity and were simply objects of improving breed through intercourse with Namboodri Brahamanas.

In the past, male dominated high caste society forced newly-wedded women of other castes to pass their first nights with superior caste males. Golwalkar’s theory supports this anachronism. A Non-Namboodiri Brahmin/Shudra male and a Namboodiri Brahmin woman cannot cohabit to improve the breed of inferior Kerala Hindus. Why? Because Namboodiri women are too precious to be sullied by other inferior races. Here even the Brahmins other than Namboodiris are also treated as inferior like Shudras.

Sangh’s cherished human cross-breeding has now been revived. The Garbh Vigyan Sanskar (pregnancy science culture) project of the RSS’ health wing Arogya Bharati will deliver customised babies for parents. The project claims to have produced results with 450 bespoke babies already out in the world. Customisation includes making these über-babies smarter, taller and fairer.

Top office-bearers associated with this ambitious programme said it was launched in Gujarat over a decade ago, and taken up at the national level in 2015. The project was inspired by Germany, which they claimed had “resurrected itself by having such signature children through Ayurvedic practices within two decades after World War II”.

The aim of this project is that women should deliver an “uttam santati”; a perfect, “customised child”. The project is conducted in two parts — before and after pregnancy. The process requires three months of “shuddhikaran (purification)” for parents, intercourse at a time decided by planetary configurations, complete abstinence after the baby is conceived, and procedural and dietary regulations. In order to spread the goal of producing ‘tall’ and ‘fair’ babies several seminars and counseling sessions have been held in Delhi, Mumbai,  Udupi, Kasaragod, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. Target is to have thousands of such babies by 2020.

The RSS belief of Aryan superiority has been borrowed from Hitler and his Nazi Party of Germany. Adolf Hitler even before becoming chancellor of Germany was obsessed with ideas about race. He believed in racial “purity” and in the superiority of the “Germanic race” which he described as Aryan “master race.” He declared this Aryan race must remain pure in order to rule the world one day which was not far away. According to Hitler, the ideal “Aryan” was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.

When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs became the government ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters, on the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in newspapers. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered “inferior.” Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations, operations making it impossible for the victims to have children.

The present project of RSS aimed at producing ‘fair’ and ‘tall’ ‘customised’ babies is direct borrowing from the Nazi “Lebensborn” (“Spring of Life”) program to create an Aryan master race. Under this project of breeding of children of pure Aryan race, some 8,000 children were born in Germany and around 12,000 in Norway as part of “Lebensborn” under the direct supervision Nazi theoretician and leader, Heinrich Himmler to encourage women of “pure blood” to bear fair-tall Aryan children. Interestingly, most of such bred children did not grow into fair-tall and blond babies. However, it was an integral part of a murderous racial policy that on the one hand aimed at producing pure Aryan children and on the other hand exterminating non-Aryans like Jews and the forced sterilization of people with hereditary diseases.

Events like the plan to create babies via eugenics, or RSS-BJP leader Tarun Vijay’s comments in April calling Dravidian language-speaking Indians “black people” remind us that race as a concept might be dead in science but it still lives on in Hindutva. It is high time the citizens of India seek answers from RSS leaders about these obnoxious ideas not about Muslims and Christians but about Hindus themselves.

References:
1. Organizer, January 2, 1961
2. The Sunday Indian Express, May 7, 2017
3. >Maria Thomas in Quartz India, May 9, 2017
4. Shoaib Daniyal in The Scroll, May 08, 2017
5. Shamsul Islam in Countercurrents, May 15, 2017
6. Angshukanta Chakraborthy in daily O, May 07, 2017

Frontier
Sep 29, 2017