New Delhi: US President-elect Donald Trump has been put in the same league as Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, founder of Italian fascism Benito Mussolini and Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar, in a training module on ideology for Congress workers, prepared by the party’s frontal organisation, Seva Dal.
The names feature in a 16-page booklet that draws a distinction between nationalism and patriotism. Hitler, Mussolini, Savarkar and Trump represent nationalism that “narrows the human mind”, as opposed to patriotism that “broadens it”, the booklet says.
Drawing a comparative analysis, the booklet lists Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Bhagat Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru, Che Guevara and Nelson Mandela as humanists and patriots.
It underlines that the term nationalism used by “fundamentalist forces in India is Hindu nationalism in reality”. The correct expression for Indian nationalism was patriotism, it adds, going on to elaborate the major differences between patriotism and “Hindu nationalism”.
The booklet is a part of the training module devised by Seva Dal, which was founded in 1923 to train and mobilise the party’s grassroots workers.
“Trump is the new icon of nationalists across the globe. It can be gauged from the fact that after the victory of Trump, RSS and BJP people celebrated. Moreover, Trump presents himself as the leader of the American people. However, in reality, he is seen as a leader by a section of the whites only,” reads the booklet, prepared after Trump’s victory in 2016. Trump was re-elected this year and is set to take charge as the 47th President of the United States in January 2025.
The booklet, however, remains a part of the Seva Dal training module, comprising exhaustive handouts on other topics and themes, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, minorities and Dalit politics, among others seen by ThePrint.
The booklet on “Ideology” adds that it is because of Trump’s lack of acceptance beyond the white Americans that “not just minorities, but also the non-whites, Asians, Latinos, and sections of white Americans, too, who are fearful following his victory”.
“That is why the fear that those with Indian roots may lose jobs and self-respect (under Trump) is legitimate,” it adds.
Hitler, the booklet says, swayed the German masses by playing up nationalist sentiments and symbols. “Like every other nationalist, he was proud not just of being a German, but also considered Aryans a superior race and harboured hatred for the Jews. That is why he murdered lakhs of Jews, pushed the world into World War II, and at the end, took his life,” it reads.
The Seva Dal module describes Mussolini as someone who impressed even Hitler, and as a nationalist figure, remained a “hero” to Italians for two decades. However, the same Italians, after realising the destruction wrought by him, dislodged him from power and got a firing squad to kill him, it says. “Such was the extent of hatred for him (Mussolini) at the end that his murdered body was undressed and hung upside down”.
Savarkar, the “so-called Veer of the RSS and BJP”, was hardly that, the Congress booklet underlines, claiming that the Hindutva ideologue was someone who “wrote nine apology letters to the British in his 11 years of prison sentence, assuring the British that he would work towards strengthening the British Raj”.
“Ten years before independence, he floated the two-nation theory, as per which, India was always divided into two nations—one of the Hindus and another of Muslims. He conspired with the British to subvert the Quit India Movement and worked with the British to get Hindus to enrol themselves in the British Army against the Azad Hind Fauj,” the training booklet says. “He was also accused of conspiring to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi, but got away due to lack of evidence. But the Kapur commission held him guilty.”
The booklet stresses that while Congress could be considered as an Indian nationalist party from the lens of the freedom struggle, it is “most certainly Indian patriotism, not Hindu nationalism” that the party represents and advocates.
“Nationalism narrows the human mind, while patriotism broadens it, instilling it with love for the country. It is difficult for a nationalist to become a patriot as they are bound by the narrow boundaries of religion, caste, and so on, but a patriot can always don the hat of a nationalist if the situation merits it,” the handout adds.
“The top leaders of the Congress like Gandhi and Nehru were essentially humanists, who demonstrated the highest form of patriotism to the nation and its people, when the time came. On the other hand, Hindu nationalist bodies RSS and Hindu Mahasabha betrayed the movement for Independence and sided with the Britishers. That is why the RSS-BJP do not have any history of sacrifice or struggle.”
