Roseville, CA Educated on HSS’s Glorification of Nazi-Inspired RSS Leader
Expanding pushback against American cities platforming international wing of RSS
After I spoke at a December 2021 meeting of the Roseville, CA city council, my remarks about how the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) — which was platformed and praised by Roseville in November 2021 — is linked to India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary prompted backlash from the local HSS.
The growing controversy was covered by local media. As the city remained silent about its ill-advised promotion of the HSS, I returned to speak again at its 16 February 2022 meeting and educate them further, emphasizing that the local HSS glorifies the longest-serving and most influential leader of the RSS, MS Golwalkar, who unapologetically praised the Nazi treatment of the Jews as a good model for the RSS to adopt.
Here is what I said:
It has now been over three months since the City of Roseville platformed and praised the HSS, which is the international wing of India’s deeply controversial RSS paramilitary. That’s certainly enough time for this council to have sought and found answers to the only questions which matter: what is the HSS, what is the RSS, and are or are they not connected to each other?
Those with any spark of curiosity and the ability to perform a two-second internet search can find the Wikipedia entry describing HSS as “a sister organization” of the RSS. Another two seconds to click through to the entry on the RSS itself reveals that it is described as “an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary.” But, as we all know, anyone can say anything on Wikipedia, right?
Instead, let’s look to the local HSS branch here in the Sacramento region — the very same group promoted by the city of Roseville.
Here we see photos from 2013, 2015, and 2021 in which the HSS in Sacramento — just like the HSS in most of the rest of the world — is displaying photos, at their gatherings, of the first two chiefs of the RSS, their parent organization. Pay particular attention to this guy, MS Golwalkar, who not only headed the RSS for 33 years but also penned the ideological “hate speech” which resulted in that paramilitary being accurately described as “Nazi-inspired.”
Now, note that I’m quoting Golwalkar — disparagingly. I do NOT endorse these sentiments. But this is what he said.
He said that Indian Muslims and Christians are “foreign” elements, “internal threats,” and “traitors” who have “joined the camp of the enemy” and whose patriotism to India is in doubt simply because they are not Hindu.
Writing at the dawn of the Second World War, he pointed to Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany as living justifications for his own desire to exterminate Indian minorities. He demanded that India should be turned into a theocratic Hindu state and insisted that non-Hindus living in India should be stripped of citizenship rights.
He said way too many hateful things to recount here right now, but the most shocking of them all was when he praised the Nazi treatment of the Jews as a model for the RSS to follow in India. I quote him: “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. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here.” In his twisted and evil thinking, the Holocaust proved that multiculturalism is impossible and that the RSS’s goal of cleansing India of all non-Hindus is justified. In his words, the Holocaust was “a good lesson for us… to learn and profit by.”
So said the guy who serves as the inspirational spirit of the HSS, the group that this city council platformed and praised just three months ago. When Roseville applauded the HSS, did the city intend to endorse that group’s glorification of an admirer of Nazi genocide?
Do you care now to reconsider your embrace of the HSS?
