Talk:Hindutva

Discussion on inspiration from European Fascism

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I have removed this fragment of a sentence from the lead:

Drawing its inspiration from European fascist movements and groups such as the Italian Fascist Party,

References

As per MOS:LEAD, the lead should summarise the body, and there is nothing about this in the body. So, this is against policy in the first place. Moreover, this particular passage has a chequered history.

• When I first came to the page, it had something like this. we see Darkness Shines, copy-editing the "drawing inspiration from European right-wing groups during WW II". The source cited "Atkins2004" is not an RS by Wikipedia norms. (Only signed articles in Encyclopedias are reliable sources.) Nevertheless, all that the source says is, "During World War II, leaders of the RSS were open admirers of Adolf Hitler." That is a factual statement, but doesn't imply "drawing inspiration". The actual quote, from Golwalkar, does say, "a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by," which might suggest drawing inspiration. But we need a scholarly source criticially examining whether such inspiration was actually drawn in practice. Hindutva was written in 1923, which Hedgewar read in the same year. RSS was started in 1925. Both were well ahead of WW II. So, this particular source says nothing about RSS having been created with inspiration from "European Fascism".

Three more sources have since been added. So I look at each of them in turn. First, some general remarks about Moonje and Savarkar, both of whom show up in all three papers. Moonje was no doubt a political patron of Hedgewar. He was a member of Congress as well as Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar was still in prison when RSS was started, but his brother Ganesh Savarkar, a Hindu Mahasabha member, was also a patron of the RSS. See the section Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh#Hindu Mahasabha influence. But the problem is, once RSS started, it became entirely independent. The Hindu Mahasabha patrons wanted it to be named "Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh", and for it to be the youth wing of Hindu Mahasabha. Hedgewar understood that and made sure that they couldn't exert any influence on it. What was more, he groomed Golwalkar as his successor, precisely because he thought he would be able to resist their pressure unlike the other more experienced RSS functionaries. (This is well-documented in the sources, and I can add content to the main page if necessary.) So, the claim that the Europenan Fascists exerted their influence on the RSS through Moonje and Savarkar doesn't fly.

• Casolari is talking about a lot of stuff, but very little about RSS. "An accurate search of the primary sources produced by the organisations of Hindu nationalism, as well as by their opponents and by the police, is bound to show the extent and the importance of the connections between such organisations and Italian fascism". "Bound to show"? Hardly scholarly. Further she claims that people like Jaffrelot, Basu etc. didn't know what they were dealing with because they were "political scientists", not "historians". Well, Jaffrelot has studied 50 years of history of RSS, and cites hundreds of citations to primary sources like Organiser and government reports as well as other people that wrote about RSS affairs. He doesn't agree that RSS was inspired by European Fascism. He traces all the elements of RSS ideology to events and influences within India. Casolari does talk extensively about Moonje and Savarkar. As explained above, they are irrelevant.
• MacDonald claims, "V. D. Savarkar, who is generally credited with defining the Hindu nationalist project, openly admired the fascist Mazzini and his 'Young Italy' organization". Yes, Mazzini's influence on Savarkar is well-acknowledged, but Mazzini (1805–1872) is from an earlie era, and it is odd to call him a "fascist". Mazzini argued for Italian integration, and he can be called a cultural nationalist. But "fascism" wasn't born in his time. Other than this, there are a lot of parallels drawn in this paper, but nothing that can be called an "influence".
• Natrajan debunks his own theory in the very first paragraph by quoting Moonje: "In his diary Moonje wrote: “The idea of fascism vividly brings out the conception of unity amongst people. India and particularly Hindu India need some such institution for the military regeneration of the Hindus.... Our institution of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh of Nagpur under Dr. Hedgewar is of this kind, though quite independently conceived." Independently conceived. End of story.

These are just a bunch of Eurocentric scholars who want to claim that only the Europeans knew how to bake bread. Vande Mataram was written in the 1870s. Vivekananda was lecturing in Chicago in 1893. Who knows, may the Indians taught the Europeans cultural nationalism? I hope I don't have to see this kind of nonsense again on Wikipedia. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:33, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is overwhelmingly your WP:OR (with a sprinkling of WP:SYNTH). Wikipedia articles report on what reliable sources say, not how we interpret those sources. The reality is the claim you removed is extremely well-cited, and there are an abundance of other sources that we could happily add to the article that would agree on this point, but it would just result in citation bloat. Unfortunately, this is often what happens with article subjected to tendentious editing by parties that have biased views on the subject matter, but if we need to do this for your satisfaction, let us know and we will discuss. Also:

Vande Mataram was written in the 1870s. Vivekananda was lecturing in Chicago in 1893. Who knows, may the Indians taught the Europeans cultural nationalism? I hope I don't have to see this kind of nonsense again on Wikipedia.

Besides (again) being WP:SYNTH (and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS), these facts are actually irrelevant. The Indian independence movement and Indian nationalism more broadly are not synonymous with RSS, and in fact, as the article notes, the RSS played at best an ambiguous role in the independence movement. Brusquedandelion (talk) 02:20, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This isnt OR, its called analysing sources. Just because someone put it in a paper doesnt make it the gospel, we can analyse their work and reject them as a source if it is of poor quality.
Also, please dont revert changes citing "stable version", the lead's stable version was significantly different from the wording used. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 09:26, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not analysing the "sources". I am analysisng the content which is not verified by the sources. None of these sources has said RSS was inspired by the European Fascist movements. The claim was made up by editors. That is called WP:OR. It is also a common misconception. The article body explicitly contradicts it citing high-quality scholars that have studied RSS and Hindutva. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but you absolutely are "analyzing" the sources (or attempting to, anyways, but your success at doing so is necessarily beyond the scope of discussion here). You are pointing out what you think are apparent contradictions, or shoddy scholarly work (e.g. when you sarcastically remark Hardly scholarly), or straight up challenging the conclusions of the text (for example, where you dispute that Mazzini was a Fascist). The fact is numerous reliable sources concur: the RSS drew inspiration from Fascist movements, as attested to even by the very quotes you yourself have so helpfully aggregated for us above. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:31, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This isnt OR, its called analysing sources. Just because someone put it in a paper doesnt make it the gospel, we can analyse their work and reject them as a source if it is of poor quality.

Sorry, but that's exactly how Wikipedia defines OR. I suggest you revise that page to better understand what original research is— and I also suggest checking out WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Your friend Kautilya3, of course, knows this, so they deny the facts, whereas you deny the consequence. In this sense, you ironically provide support for my argument.

Also, please dont revert changes citing "stable version", the lead's stable version was significantly different from the wording used.

This just isn't true. I reverted to the version that was in place both before Kautilya3's edits and my own. The article has claimed the RSS drew inspiration from Fascist/European far right movements for at least four years, quite possibly much longer; I stopped looking past January 2020. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

So I finally sat down and read the Casolari piece at length, and I have to ask— did you read it? Or just an abstract or preview? As the article is not easily accessible without e.g. a JSTOR subscription or institutional access, you can be forgiven for not reading all of it, but you should have made that clear in your original message. Because it is impossible to understand how anyone who actually did read the paper could come away with a conclusion like Casolari is talking about a lot of stuff, but very little about RSS or that the expression is bound to show represents a conclusion rather than an introduction, after which she proceeds to do exactly that: show that the RSS drew inspiration from European Fascism.

Let me state, in no uncertain terms: the express, undisputable purpose of the paper, in her own words, is to show that Hindu nationalism, and in particular the RSS and its chief ideologues, borrowed from Fascism, repeatedly expressed their admiration for authoritarian leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler and the Fascist model of society, and that [t]his influence continues to the present day. In other words, she shows the very thing that you lead us to believe she left as a question for future research. If you did read the article, this is the height of dishonesty.

In response to your aggressively worded demand for quotes above, I will soon be placing quotes from the Casolari article into the citations of the Wikipedia article here shortly, but again, I must ask: did you actually read the paper? The assertion that Casolari talks about a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the RSS is particularly galling given the sheer number of times she references the RSS (no less than 58 times, by name; more via means of anaphora, etc.) Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I keep forgetting to ask about this:

The source cited "Atkins2004" is not an RS by Wikipedia norms. (Only signed articles in Encyclopedias are reliable sources.)

Could you cite the specific Wikipedia policy for this? I'm not seeing it; on the contrary WP:RSPRIMARY says Reputable tertiary sources, such as introductory-level university textbooks, almanacs, and encyclopedias, may be cited, and neither it nor WP:TERTIARY say anything about encyclopedic sources needing to be "signed". But perhaps this policy is elsewhere? Feel free to show us. Brusquedandelion (talk) 08:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Here is Ian Talbot, a top historian of modern South Asia, describing the context of 1920s and 1930s, in which RSS was born:

Their emergence coincided with the rise of fascist movements in troubled inter-war Europe. But the sound and fury of the storm troopers [fascist movements] was only a faint whisper in the mohallas of India.[4] Its volunteer movements were rooted in the practice of landlords and rais employing goondas in factional disputes and in the tradition of proficiency in lathi-bearing practiced in open spaces and gymnasia by youths and professional wrestlers. Communities and political parties institutionalized the employment of volunteers, as communal conflict increased in India's towns and cities during the early 1920s. Thus the scheduled castes formed the Samata Sainak Dal, whilst the Arya Samaj established the Arya Vir Dal. Subhas Chandra Bose, the nearest equivalent to a budding Indian Mussolini, set up the Azad Hind Dal of the Forward Bloc following his spat with Gandhi in 1939.

This should lay to rest any claims of "inspiration" from the European Fascist movements. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

The text is quite literally comparing the RSS to Indian Fascists. While this excerpt does not establish a direction of causality here, that just means it neither provides evidence for or against the edit you want to effect. But it does provide evidence for retaining some comparison of the RSS with Fascism in the article, since clearly this is a comparison scholarly sources repeatedly make, in one way or another.

Is your point perhaps that the RSS did Fascism even better than the Europeans? This is what this source is effectively stating, for example. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's exactly how Wikipedia defines OR. I suggest you revise that page to better understand what original research is— and I also suggest checking out WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Your friend Kautilya3, of course, knows this, so they deny the facts, whereas you deny the consequence. In this sense, you ironically provide support for my argument.

Nope. Kautilya3 may disagree on what their argument was based on, but that is not OR. OR is analysis or synthesis of published material that reaches or implies a conclusion not stated by the sources. Simply pointng out faults with sources and discounting them based on those faults is not OR, please read the policies you cite.

I would also caution against throaway accusations of WP:RGW, as well as dropping edit warring notices at talk pages after yourself repeatedly reverting to your preferred version. It is highly disruptive. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

OR is analysis or synthesis of published material that reaches or implies a conclusion not stated by the sources

Yes, and that is exactly what Kautilya3 does. As an example, do you think the source that Kautilya3 calls "hardly scholarly" reaches the conclusion that it itself is unscholarly? Obviously not, but Kautilya3 seems to think WP:IDONTLIKEIT is a valid reason for rejecting a source's conclusions, without citing independent, reliable sources that make the same argument. As another example, he specifically disputed one source which claims Mazzini was a Fascist. Wikipedia doesn't care what you personally think about whether Mazzini was a Fascist or not! If you can find reliable sources making the same argument (not just regarding Mazzini, but specifically about Mazzini and how he inspired the RSS, as otherwise this would be WP:SYNTH), that is a different matter.

I would also caution against throaway accusations of WP:RGW, as well as dropping edit warring notices at talk pages after yourself repeatedly reverting to your preferred version

For the umpteenth time, my last revert was to a version prior to my own edits as well as Kautilya3's. Thus, you should heed your own warning. Brusquedandelion (talk) 17:01, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

This is either a WP:CIR issue or you are deliberately misreading policy.

As an example, do you think the source that Kautilya3 calls "hardly scholarly" reaches the conclusion that it itself is unscholarly

Are you seriously saying that we cant find a source's commentary insufficient or unreliable unless the source calls itself insufficient or unreliable? What sort of an argument is this?

As for your revert, not only is it to a version that is effectively the same as your preferred version (separate issues with that as well - The sentence was modified incorrectly in between as a "copyedit" from the older longstanding version), but your excuse would be invalid even if it was true. Please read WP:EDITWAR. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 17:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Are you seriously saying that we cant find a source's commentary insufficient or unreliable unless the source calls itself insufficient or unreliable?

You cannot find a source's commentary insufficient or unreliable, but you can cite other independent, reliable sources which make that argument. Kautilya3 has not done this, and therefore their rationale is purely OR.

As for your revert, not only is it to a version that is effectively the same as your preferred version

Again, this is just false! Why are you lying when anyone can see the page history? The lead has claimed that the RSS drew inspiration from Fascist movements for at least 4 years. Notably, this is not a version that refers to the organization as "far right," which would indeed be my "preferred version." Brusquedandelion (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and how could I forget. This quote doesn't even reference the RSS! Yet again, more WP:SYNTH from you. Brusquedandelion (talk) 16:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Brusquedandelion, you are writing a lot of stuff here, but you are not processing the points that I had made. So I went back and put in bold face, the key points. Please read them again and process them. A couple of points of explanation. "Bound to show" in Cassolari's text means that she hasn't shown it. She simply believes that it will show. That is not evidence. Regarding Mazzini, Mazzini was dead long before Fascism was born. So, it doesn't make sense to call him "fascist". Why the scholar called him a "fascist", I have no idea. It is also wildly beyond the topic of this page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Once again, this is your WP:OR. You have bolded your original research, but that does not make it any less your original research, I'm afraid.

"Bound to show" in Cassolari's text means that she hasn't shown it.

She makes this claim early in the article. She then proceeds to do exactly that: to show it. It is an introductory remark, and not a conclusion of the text. This is readily apparent even from the title of the article.

Regarding Mazzini, Mazzini was dead long before Fascism was born. So, it doesn't make sense to call him "fascist"

This is your WP:SYNTH, I'm afraid. The fact is the source refers to him as such. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:15, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

References

3O

I am afraid that I do not really see much (any?) reason in Brusquedandelion's rather-simplistic arguments. One shall ideally start by reading Ben Zachariah's A Voluntary Gleichschaltung? Indian Perspectives Towards a non-Eurocentric Understanding of Fascism to appreciate the complexities and why the line obfuscates more than it clarifies. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:53, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Although the connections of proponents of a militant Hindu nationalism (now simply referred to as the Sangh Parivar or Hindutvabadi) as a völkisch nationalism with Fascism and Nazism, not to mention with its leaders, are well worked out, [source: Casolari; contrasted with Jaffrelot who is said to "specifically avoid the fascism question"] it remains unclear how much the appeal of the Hindu ideologues M.S. Golwalkar, K.B. Hegdewar, or V.D. Savarkar actually depended upon the borrowings of their ideas from fascists, rather than the similarities that they recognised and perhaps reformulated in the language of fascism. The Sangh Parivar, and especially those who organised its paramilitary wings and wrote its ideological treatises, were familiar with European fascism, particularly its most successful Italian and German variants, and found them good, worthwhile, and useful models to emulate. This is not to suggest, however, that all of their ideas were merely imitations. It is not clear whether the fascist connection garnered any further support for the Hindutva brigade amongst their following, or whether the family resemblances of the ideologies brought them closer together.

Another example can be seen in a “Muslim” group: Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi, the founder and leader of the Khaksar movement, which was also called fascist in its own time, claimed to have met Hitler in 1926; later he even claimed that Hitler had learned from him!

TrangaBellam (talk) 18:03, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Your own source affirms that the connections of proponents of a militant Hindu nationalism (now simply referred to as the Sangh Parivar or Hindutvabadi) as a völkisch nationalism with Fascism and Nazism, not to mention with its leaders, are well worked out. It only disputes the exact mechanism and degree of this connection. The disputed line, which Kautilya3 removed, only makes the very weak claim that the RSS "dr[e]w... its inspiration" from these movements, which is clearly supported even by your own source.

Also, are you seriously claiming that Kautilya3's arguments are not OR? Note that, unlike you, they do not actually reference any other sources. They merely cast aspersions on the existing sources. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:20, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

OR is only prohibited in article-space; source analyses on talk pages are necessarily OR. It's when that OR strays beyond the bounds of Wikipedia's definitions of NPOV and RS that it becomes a problem. In any case, this talk page is intended for discussion of article improvements, not about the quality of another editor's arguments. It is patently obvious there are lots of sources discussing the similarities, connections, and differences between Hindutva and European fascism. The focus here needs to be on how to summarize them accurately: what's currently in the article fails to do this. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so, first, you agree their analysis is OR. That's a good starting point.

The problem here is that they have deleted a well-sourced claim, that has been, in one form or another, in the WP:STABLE version of the article for at least half a decade, based on their own original research. Notably, they have not substituted the claim with any other regarding the connections between RSS ideology and Fascism.

I agree that the present article fails to accurately summarize these connections. However, deleting this sentence and not adding anything in its place is a clearly substandard "solution". It is a non-solution, in fact, and results in a article that fails to meet WP:NPOV guidelines by omission. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:32, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm saying that being OR doesn't disqualify talk page source analysis in any way, and as such it's not relevant whether it's OR or not. I've restored the stable version, per below.

Let's focus on identifying some good sources and summarizing them, please. The ones I have in my notes are several Jaffrelot works; Bhatt & Mukta 2000; Bhatt 2001; Freykenburg 2008; Kurien 2017; and Leidig 2020. I will dig out full citations when I've a little more time, but hopefully the many voices here are already aware of these. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:44, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I agree with this. I am presently working on summarizing the sources I have access to, and will share my work soon. I invite the other parties in this discussion to do the same. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:48, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I do not agree with K3 either but more importantly, I do not agree with you or the line. If after consulting Zachariah's article, you do not see the problems with our reductive formulation, what can I say? And, no, "drew its inspiration from" is not a weaker version of what Zachariah notes — quite the opposite rather! TrangaBellam (talk) 20:20, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Again- it isn't my formula. However I think removing what little mention there is in the article of a connection between European Fascism and the RSS results in an objectively worse article.

no, "drew its inspiration from" is not a weaker version of what Zachariah notes

Yeah, I don't understand this logic at all. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:20, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• I don't support Brusquedandelion's line as written; it's an obvious over-simplification. Yet what we have at the moment is pretty bad; there's numerous scholars analyzing both the similarities and the differences between Hindutva and European fascist movements of the 20th century, and the notion that Golwalkar and Savarkar drew inspiration from ethno-nationalist movements is most certainly not restricted to "euro-centric" scholars. The article as a whole is pretty bad, but the ideology and analysis sections could be greatly fleshed out with contemporary scholarly sources, and a summary of the links to fascism certainly belong in there. It is also worth remembering that in contemporary usage fascism is used by scholars to denote particular structural and ideological features of a movement, irrespective of chronology. The timeline therefore doesn't preclude the usage of the term with respect to the Hindutva movement. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:04, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• +1. And, indeed, the whole debate on whether - and to what extent - the founding fathers of RSS/... depended on ideas of fascism emanating from Europe is quite misplaced and oblivious of recent scholarship that shuns such a derivative-model (as Ben Z writes) approach. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:08, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

  That's all fine and well, but the change Kautilya3 is proposing does not actually make the article more nuanced and in line with this recent scholarship. On the contrary, it removes what little mention there actually is in the article of a connection between the RSS and Fascism. This is an objectively worse edit in that sense, even by your own argument. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:24, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't support Brusquedandelion's line as written

It isn't my line. It is the WP: STABLE line, some version of which has been in this article for half a decade or longer, which Kautilya3 has removed without reaching talk page consensus. Brusquedandelion (talk) 18:17, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

You are correct; it was the stable version, or the closest thing we have to it. As such I've restored the stable version, and hopefully that will drive more pro-active discussion here. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Please, V, this is a grossly poor line — almost parody-worthy. What needs to be emphasized upon — in no uncertain terms — is the similarities between RSS' ideology and fascism; not this. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:20, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:STABLE doesn't mean the article is frozen. When a policy-based edit is made and no policy-based objection has been made, crying out STABLE doesn't help. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:23, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Your edit was not "policy-based", I have repeatedly argued. Reiterating the claim that it is does not make it any more so. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:15, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

What do you suggest and why? M.Bitton (talk) 20:44, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree about the emphasis, but I'm seeing a lot of stone-walling about that similarity above and very little substantive engagement with the sources. That combined with the lack of consensus for outright removal prompted my revert. I'm not going to make another. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:47, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• What do you think of this?

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the Indian counterpart of the western alt-right ideologies today and the flag-bearers of ultra-nationalism in this part of the world. Founded in 1925, primarily with an objective of consolidating Hindus against Muslims, RSS is driven by a divisive communal “Hindutva” ideology. They always had close links with fascist ideologists and organizations since the very beginning. One of the founders of RSS (B.S. Moonje) had visited Italy in 1931 to study the methods of the Italian fascist youth organization “Ballila” and had personally met up with the fascist dictator Mussolini. RSS founders had, in fact, drawn their inspiration and ideas from Italian and German fascists, and modeled their ideology of ethnic nationalism and built their organization emulating the Nazis. RSS’s slogan “one flag, one leader and one ideology” is a direct adaptation from Nazis and other European fascist outfits. RSS wants to transform India into a “Hindu Nation,” where Muslims and Christians are treated as second-class citizens. RSS ideologue Golwalkar (1939) was a staunch follower and admirer of Hitler and Nazism. He had never supported a secular India and was of the view that Hindus and other non-Hindu religions cannot coexist in India. He was, in fact, a strong proponent of using Nazi model to purge India of non-Hindu races. In his book We or Our Nationhood Defined, Golwalkar (1939, p. 87–88) wrote:

To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic race—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures having differences going to the roots, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.

One of the reports filed in 1933 by the British Home Department had categorically identified RSS as an organization that aspired to be in the future India what the “Fascists” were to Italy and the “Nazis” to Germany.

The above was copied from this source. The one nation, one culture, one people slogan is also mentioned in this source. M.Bitton (talk) 20:49, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

That you need to brush up on WP:RS? TrangaBellam (talk) 22:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

What part of what has been quoted do you disagree with? M.Bitton (talk) 23:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Moonje and the Golwalkar quote is discussed right at the top of this section. Please read it. As for the British administrators WP:CRYSTAL, see that policy page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:34, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Feel free to link to whatever you're asking me to read (assuming it's directly related to what has been quoted). Also, why are you citing WP:CRYSTAL? M.Bitton (talk) 23:53, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, you are editor that reinstated the disputed content? Please note that I have put a Failed verification tag on it. Please provide quotations from the soruces that support the disputed content. I will give you 24 hours. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 00:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I restored the stable version that was restored by someone else for the simple reason that a) it's been there for years, b) nobody has questioned it before now and c) those who are questioning it did not say anything about failed verification.

There multiple sources that are attached to that sentence: which source did you tag? I will add the source that I quoted above if I have to.

I can add so much sourced content, but the only reason that's preventing me from doing so is the idea that we are having a discussion and trying to understand each other's positions. If that's not the case, let me know and I'll let the reliable sources do all the talk. M.Bitton (talk) 00:49, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The fact that you do not like the conclusions of the text do not constitute a "failed verification", sorry. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

M.Bitton When you revert somebody's edit and reinstate disputed content, you should be able to defend it and show how it satisfies WP:V and WP:NPOV. If you are unable to do that, you should self-revert and stay out.

Brusquedandelion, whoever knew that you come here and jump around like a big boy expert editor, but I have to teach you first grade math the basics? WP:V says:

All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the material.

[b] A source "directly supports" a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source so that using this source to support the material is not a violation of Wikipedia:No original research.

I have also now added a quotation requested tag. Please add quotations from any of those sources that "directly supports" the disputed content, and remove others that don't support it. You have 24 hours. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:24, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Brusquedandelion, whoever knew that you come here and jump around like a big boy, but I have to teach you first grade math?

Please refer to Wikipedia:No personal attacks and refrain from harassing me.

Please add quotations from any of those sources that "directly supports" the disputed content, and remove others that don't support it. You have 24 hours.

Sorry, but on Wikipedia there is no deadline. I'm happy to contribute to making this a better article, and I will do so with an appropriate amount of urgency, but I have zero interest in this sort of petty bullying and browbeating. Please do not ping me again if you intend to address me in this manner, or I will have no choice but to seek administrator intervention. Also,

When you revert somebody's edit and reinstate disputed content, you should be able to defend it and show how it satisfies WP:V and WP:NPOV

This is not how the WP:BRD cycle works, as regrettably, it is your edit to a WP:STABLE article that was disputed, and thus until such time as WP:CONSENSUS is reached, you should refrain from reintroducing your disputed edits. You should review that article to better understand Wikipedia policy on reverts. Brusquedandelion (talk) 03:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Deadline can be given as per policy.

Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source.

Since you have restored it (and that includes M.Bitton as well), you are under an obligation to provide a soure that directly supports the material. Or, you can remove the disputed content and take your own sweet time. Your choice. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:21, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Already done, and besides, the drive-by tagging is clearly disruptive as all 4 cited sources support the statement (this has been confirmed by another editor today). Now, do me a bif favour and refrain from pinging me again. M.Bitton (talk) 12:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see where you have done anything. All 4 cited sources are the original ones, and I have already flagged them as failing verification and requested quotations that show that they "directly support" the content. You have not provided any quotations. (You have mentioned a longer work by Casolari here on the talk page, but again without any quotations.) How can you possibly make a disputed revert and then say stop pinging me? That doesn't make any sense. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:58, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

If you try harder, you may be able to see my other comments (including the one below this). M.Bitton (talk) 13:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

But the material is not lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports[b] the masource. The inline citation is plainly there for everyone to see, is from reliable sources, and does support the material, as multiple editors have confirmed at this point. Anyways, I have edited the body of the article to include cited quotes. I should note that quotations in Wikipedia article citations are not substitutes for actually reading the text, and are necessarily limited in what they can cover, since we can't (for example) copy paste the entire source into the citation, only a few relevant points. It is becoming increasingly clear at this point that you haven't actually done the elementary work of reading the sources you are critiquing, so I suggest starting there, and not use the fact that I have entertained your demand for inline quotations as a substitute for such reading. Brusquedandelion (talk) 17:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: I already have and left more reliable sources here that fully support what I restored. I personally don't think it's needed, but if it helps, I can easily add the above source and quote to the article and remove the drive-by fv tag. M.Bitton (talk) 03:36, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• Here are a couple of reliable sources about the subject:

1. In the Shadow of the Swastika The Relationships Between Indian Radical Nationalism, Italian Fascism and Nazism, by Marzia Casolari.
2. RSS: Marketing Fascism as Hindutva (unlike the first, this one is easily accessible). M.Bitton (talk) 01:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

This is an excellent start, thank you. However it presently has a decidedly unencyclopedic tone that needs some work. Brusquedandelion (talk) 01:16, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment: I regret I have no time to dig into sources at the moment, but let me just note that:

• The concept of a nation-state developed in Europe during the 19th century, culminating in two world wars that, unlike previous wars, were not simple land grabs but were underpinned by ethonationalism.
• For most of the 19th century and much of the 20th century, that concept was relatively alien to India where the primary self-identification for a large part of population was, and still largely is, caste and/or ethnic group.
• Vande Mataram or Anandamath, being works of high culture, didn't reflect the realities and sensitivities of the masses at the time. Chattopadhyay only called for the rise of Indian nationalism, and not reflected its existence.
• While it can be argued that individual nationalist movements across the world did not necessarily need direct inspiration from Europe, several authors have noted direct contacts between Indian and European groups. It's thus hard not to notice the emergence of such common features as cult of violence, military-inspired civilian groups, structured intimidation (mass marches, weapon display), adoption of brown/khaki colour, focus on organised military training of children, special greeting rituals, and ideological polarisation (us vs everybody else). Most of that was alien to India until 20th century.

Whether the early RSS leaders simply tried to duplicate the Italian or German phenomena of the times, will likely never be known. What we know is that they saw European fascism. We also know that the very idea of militant nationalism, focused on a freshly conceptualised nation state, was only just taking off in Europe during fin de siècle, and, arguably, was alien to the Indian society at the time.

Interestingly, while large parts of Europe began to move away gradually from ethnonationalism after the experiences of WW2, leading to the modern-day European Union with much less in terms of borders and ethnic tensions, India has been following the path of nation building accompanied by aggressive nationalism and an ever-growing polarisation between us and everybody else, which incidentally led to several military conflicts with four of its neighbours.

Now, it's all OR by me, just a Wikipedia editor. Since i was approached directly, I'm posting it only as a justification for why I can't support Kautilya3, for whom I have high respect, in arguing that RSS was not inspired by the European fascist movements. To the best of my knowledge, aggressive ethnonationalism promoted as a state ideology and enforced through organised grassroot-level movements was not an indigenous Indian invention. Quite baffling in all this is Kautilya3's exclamation that "These are just a bunch of Eurocentric scholars who want to claim that only the Europeans knew how to bake bread", as it instantly reminds of the kettle and pot proverb. Except that bragging rights to fascism bring no honour. — kashmīrī ^TALK 01:50, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

To add to this— I have at this point, on several occasions, asked @Kautilya3 if their point is that the RSS did Fascism even better than the Europeans. Talbot, for example, a source they offered up, while it does not even mention the RSS, certainly does seem to be gesturing at something like this, as does Kautilya3's own assertion re: baking bread. Brusquedandelion (talk) 03:34, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I will give brief reply since I don't want us to digress. Not only the "nation-state", but the idea of "nation" itself is an import from Europe. There are no words for "nation" in Indian languages: rashtra (meaking kingdom, same as rajya) is an artificial translation. But nationalism can exist even if people don't have the language to articulate it. They might just express it in strange ways that we can't relate to. I believe Bharat-mata is one of those ways. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee was certainly a nationalist. Whether he was a "Hindu nationalist" or an "Indian nationalist" or whether he even saw any difference between the two is debatable.

The point of mentioning Vande Mataram and Vivekananda is to underscore the roots of these nationalisms in which Hindutva was born. This is amply analysed by Christophe Jaffrelot in his 600-page volume on Hindu nationalist movement. That is how the Indians baked their own "bread". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:21, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

But this is not what I asked you and indeed not what is being discussed. Vivekananda, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, etc. were not members of the RSS. If you think all nationalism is Fascism or vice versa, feel free to make that assertion, of course, but if not, that's fundamentally not what this discussion is about.

There are no words for "nation" in Indian languages: rashtra (meaking kingdom, same as rajya) is an artificial translation

This was also true in European languages— until it wasn't! The meanings of words change. The idea that in the 4,000+ year history of the Indian civilization, purely by happenstance nationalism just magically happened to arise precisely when it was ruled by a European power, concomitant with the rise of nationalisms all over the world, and that the first and chief ideologues of this nationalism were overwhelmingly upper class Indians brought up in the Anglo mould, educated at British-founded schools or universities, also by coincidence, is laughable. You should read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson (and The Indian Ideology by his brother Perry Anderson, for a specifically Indian treatment) if you sincerely believe this. The former, for his part, firmly roots the first nationalisms in the Americas, and only subsequently Europe, and then elsewhere (are we to conclude from this analysis that Anderson is a Latin American-centric scholar, who thinks Bolívar taught the world how to bake bread? Obviously not).

None of this is to deny the agency of Indians in baking their own bread! Far from it. This is the problem with reductive Hindutva (pseudo-)historiographies, which assume that if anything has had "foreign" influence it automatically makes it worse, somehow; or that if we can't show that everything from calculus to toilet paper was invented in India (ideally before anyone else) this is somehow an assault on the Indian national character. Such characterizations reek of a deep seated inferiority complex— ironically itself the result of centuries of colonial rule, yet another way the European leaves their imprint on India.

But again— that's besides the point. We aren't just discussing the origins of nationalisms in India, we are specifically discussing the origins of Indian Fascist and far-right ideologies. I have probably already committed a grievous error by entertaining your strawman, but it needed to be said. Brusquedandelion (talk) 13:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 I can't read that book atm but I see a distinction between "we all live in a single country" (a rashtra called Mother India, etc.) and "we are one nation".

As I wrote, I'm unconvinced that nationalism – at least in its classic, European flavour – really took off in India before the later half of the 20th century, and also more as a result of state propaganda than an actual self-identification of the population. Earlier attempts at fascism, like one of the RSS, were closer to what we'd call sectarianism than nationalism (again, because of the primary identification of the population being with a religious/ethnic group rather than with the entirety of India's inhabitants).

By the way, I'm yet to meet a person who'd introduce themselves as "I'm Indian" instead of "I'm from India", lol. — kashmīrī ^TALK 13:54, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Influence and inspiration

• Here from the OR noticeboard. I checked all four sources that are currently used to support the claim, and all four verified that European fascism was an influence on the movement. That should be the end of the discussion. One good point was raised though: this isn't sufficiently covered in the body. The correct response would be to add this information to the body. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:19, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  The argument isnt that nobody makes that claim, but that much better scholarship exists that contradicts the claims and the ones who support it are shabby or otherwise problematic.

  Its fine to say in the body "some scholars argue...... Others point to.... " etc, but stating as fact in the lead is plainly contrary to policy. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 14:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  What claim? Here's what William Dalrymple has to say about RSS:

  the RSS was founded in direct imitation of European fascist movements, and like its 1930s fascist models it still makes much of daily parading in khaki drill and the giving of militaristic salutes: the RSS salute differs from that of the Nazis only in the angle of the arm, which is held horizontally over the chest. The RSS sees this as an attempt to create a corps of dedicated paramilitary zealots who, so the theory goes, will form the basis of a revival of a golden age of national strength and racial purity... Madhav Golwalkar, the early RSS leader still known simply as “the Guru”, was the man who formulated the outlines of the RSS world-view and looked directly to the Nazi thinkers of 1930s Germany. He took particular inspiration from Hitler’s treatment of German religious minorities. “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of its Semitic Race, the Jews,” Golwalkar wrote admiringly in 1938. During Partition, the RSS was responsible for many of the worst atrocities against Muslims, and it was a former RSS swayamsevak, Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 for “pandering to the minorities”. In the aftermath of the assassination, Pandit Nehru decided to deal firmly with the Hindu nationalists and he denounced the RSS as a “private army which is definitely proceeding on the strictest Nazi lines”. Partly as a result of this, the Hindu nationalists were an insignificant political force during the first decades of independent India; but by the 1980s they had returned with a vengeance. Today the RSS has roughly 40 million members, organised under 40,000 district centres across the country.

  M.Bitton (talk) 14:29, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  The argument isnt that nobody makes that claim

  Your pal Kautilya3 disagrees (or used to; and until recently you heavily insinuated you did as well), as attested by his drive-by "verification needed" tag on four different sources that, as have been confirmed here by multiple parties and now even by you, it seems, actually do make this claim. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  ? I said the sources were shoddy and could be discounted based on better available commentary. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, actually, you didn't, because literally the only person who has actually even attempted to offer alternate commentary is TrangaBellam, and both you and Kautilya3 were simply, quite nakedly, misreading the given sources, rather than trying to offer up alternate ones, before TrangaBellam even showed up in the discussion. c.f. K3's blatant misreading of Casolari and your implicit support for it, vs. TrangaBellam who has at least tried to offer what they believe to be better commentary, without disputing that Casolari does provide evidence for the sentence, as written. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:33, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you Thebiguglyalien, I agree with both of your points. Unfortunately, it is not "influence" that is being debated here, but "inspiration", which is a considerably stronger claim. Many people claim (see, e.g., Dalrymple above) that RSS founded as a copy of the European fascist movements.The evidence for such a claim is non-existent, as far as I can see. But this goes against the orthodoxy. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, it is not "influence" that is being debated here, but "inspiration"

  Are you a native English speaker? I mean this without linguistic prejudice, but we are editing an English language Wikipedia and this seems unfortunately to be a question of WP:Competence is required in the linguistic domain. See definition 1 at Merriam Webster:

  an inspiring agent or influence

  As well as 4 (c):

  the act of influencing or suggesting opinions

  All emphasis above is my own.

  That said, are saying you are amenable to changing the sentence to something like— "Influenced by..." instead of "Drawing its inspiration from..."? Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:45, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

My English is fine. The finer issues of the terms are:

• A inspired B means that A was a driving force behind B doing something. If not for A, perhaps B would not have done what they did.
• A influenced B means A got B to change their ways in some fashion. More often, "influence" may be subliminal, in borrowing thought processes.

More important for our purposes is the fact that influences can come from a variety of sources, and unless one has studied all the influences, one cannot be sure whether something was a driving influence or even the predominant influence. This is the problem Casolari (along with all other Eurocentric scholars) runs into. They start seeing European influence behind everything, just because it is something they know about. You have to study B on its own to understand what was driving it.

Physical training and drilling with uniforms was mimicking what the British were doing locally in India. It wasn't borrowing from remote Italy. The driver for doing it was the perception that Hindus were faring poorly in Hindu-Muslim riots, locally, even in Nagpur in 1923. It wasn't the remote Fascism arising in Italy just about that time. All these things are made clear in Jaffrelot, which these scholars occasionally cite, but mostly ignore. They are just going around with a hammer in hand looking for nails to hit. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:15, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• This organisation had many inspirations. There is no need to single out just one entity on lead. Srijanx22 (talk) 06:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  WP:DUE requires us to cover topics in proportion to their coverage in reliable sources, and the reality is that no small amount of ink has been spilled on documenting the extent and nature of the inspiration European Fascist movements had on the RSS. Brusquedandelion (talk) 07:46, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Casolari

I have now actually read the Casolari piece, which Kautilya3 incorrectly or perhaps dishonestly summarized as only making the claim that future research is "bound to show" the connection on question— in fact, this remark is merely introductory, and subsequent to this, Casolari explicitly provides archival evidence for this assertion, and indeed this is the whole point of the essay. I have to ask, TrangaBellam— did you read this piece? It is impossible to understand how someone could honestly read that piece and agree with Kautilya3's assessment of it, for reasons I have summarized above (Ctrl+F the string "As the article is not easily accessible without" and you will find my comment). This completely casts into doubt the rest of Kautilya3's assessment of the sources, whether or not they read this piece (as if they did read it, they are guilty of dishonesty; and if they did not, they are clearly unfamiliar with the pieces they are critiquing). Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:18, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I have not read Casolari's essay but I assume her ~100 page book — In the shadow of the swastika: the relationships between Indian radical nationalism, Italian fascism and nazism (Routledge; 2020) — is the best exposition of her thesis and I had read it, long ago. Chapter 2 is the relevant one:

So, Casolari starts by noting (p. 33-34):

It is hard to assert whether Fascism had a part to play in the birth of militant organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) [...] Initially, the RSS must have been very closely modelled on the akharas, the Bengali gymnasiums where martial arts and paramilitary training were performed – and the secret societies founded in Maharashtra by young militants close to Tilak, including the Savarkar brothers.

However, she cautions (p. 34-36) that the contemporary Marathi press (1920s) held Fascist politics in immense regard and given certain similarities between fascist militias and RSS since inception, it is not improbable that the founders were influenced by Fascism. In the next couple of sections, Casolari's excruciating focus is on Moonje's maneuvers in Italy during Jan-Feb 1931 including on his meeting with Mussolini — Moonje, in his diary, had noted (p. 42) about the relevance of the symbol of the ‘fascio’ to Indian context and of his plans to replicate it in India esp. by paramilitary training on a mass-scale. She ends the section by noting that:

the impact [of the trip] on the future development of Hindu militancy can hardly be underestimated.

In the next section, Casolari shows how across the 1930s, Moonje waxed about the need of militarily organising the Hindus along the lines of Mussolini and, in 1938 (p. 51; c.f. p. 47: 1934), would eventually open the Bhonsla Military School in association with RSS. However, as she notes in footnote 56:

Moonje had already shown some interest in the question of military education by the end of 1920s. He was in favour of the “Indianisation” of the army... In [1929] he founded the Rifle Association in Nagpur.

Fwiw, the idea of "militarily organising the Hindus" againsta an amorphous other (British/Muslims/...) has been a prominent component in multiple strands of Indian Nationalism since 1920s (if not before; see Franziska Roy's unpublished dissertation; Hedgewar was associated with Hindustani Seva Dal, etc.) — while I am sympathetic to the argument about how Moonje might have augmented it, she does not show any cognizance of the complexity of the issue! Nonwtheless, even she had to concede (p. 51):

[T]he values and practices that Moonje considered the roots of military education were more or less those of the akharas and the secret societies.

So, now, all that said and done, how does Casolari transpose Moonje's flirtations with fascism onto RSS except by a guilt-of-association? She takes recourse to an IB note from 1933 that had the RSS characterized as would-be Nazis and a meeting in 1934 where HMS leaders spoke approvingly of RSS for organizing a volunteer corps of Hindus.

To wrap up, as Zachariah (2020) notes:

[D]eeper intellectual, institutional and organisational, or social histories of engagements with fascism are not available. Many histories or analyses of Hindutva [eg: Jaffrelot] simply avoid the uncomfortable question of fascism; those that do not [eg: Casolari], rely mainly on the connections some of these Hindutva ideologues had with fascism in Europe.

I have nothing else to add except that as much as Casolari's scholarship is based on meticulous archival work, it is methodologically shabby, refusing to think of Fascism except as a Western import — having some not-very-clear minimums — for Indian consumers and, in the process, missing the forest for the trees. History, done Casolari's way, takes away focus from the multilocal longue durée histories of fascist repertoire of ideas. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:16, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

First, what's at dispute here is not whether you personally find Casolari's conclusions convincing. What is of primary dispute is whether Kautilya3's interpretation of them is accurate— and in particular, whether or not she herself is making the argument that the RSS is inspired by Fascism. And the fact is, as you have conceded at this point, she absolutely is! Thus, Casolari is a perfectly valid source for inserting a claim of this form into the article. This is what I asked you, and it is regrettable that you answered not by telling us what Casolari actually believes, but instead by deflecting and answering the (frankly, irrelevant) question of how her words make you, personally, feel.

Unfortunately, you are just some guy on Wikipedia, as am I, and your or my analysis of Casolari can never serve as the primary basis for her treatment in this Wikipedia text, although you are free to air your grievances on the talk page. Unless reputable sources argue what you are arguing, they simply cannot form the basis for editing the article! To my knowledge, reputable sources have not made the argument that Casolari is being "methodologically shabby" (a contention you don't give any real evidence for, by the way, besides vibes, a veritable morass of contradiction, and general WP:IDONTLIKEIT— but more on that later). Some have arrived at perhaps slightly different conclusions than her, and whatever text we decide on the article should reflect the multiplicity of such claims. However, the specific analysis you are making will not be amongst them because, actually, reputable sources don't concur in your assessment.

Now to get into the actual meat of your comment. There is a delectable irony running throughout your critique where, on the one hand, you use any sort of nuance in Casolari's position as evidence of weakness in her general thesis, while simultaneously accusing her of lacking nuance! What are we to conclude from this particular hypocrisy, other that that you have convinced yourself of the lack of merit of Casolari's thesis, and are now mission-bound to show it by any "evidence" necessary— even by flatly contradictory lines of evidence? Such a treatment is something anyone can post on a Wikipedia talk page, which is why it appears here and not in, for example, a review article in a peer-reviewed historical journal, because such drive-by analysis would never fly in the latter. Yes, Casolari permits that the RSS was not singularly inspired by European Fascism. But no one was arguing otherwise. You have only to compare your assessment of Casolari's text as lacking "cognizance of the complexity of the issue" with her own words, which roundly put to rest any such characterization of her work: If it is true that the Hindu society elaborated its own patterns of militarisation — I refer to the shakas as a typically Indian phenomenon — it is equally true that a most relevant result of fascist influence was the transmission of a more functional organisation and a stronger political character to the already existing organisations of political Hinduism.

To claim anyone was arguing otherwise is is fundamentally a strawman you and Kautilya3 have set up because you know the actual argument being made (that European Fascism, via a variety of means, played an integral role in shaping the rise of the RSS) is essentially unimpeachable. All reliable sources do is debate the specific mechanisms by which it happened. Casolari's contribution, in the main, to this body of work is showing, via archival evidence (none of which you actually mention in your comment), the specific ways that direct contact between Fascist leaders and Hindutva ideologues acted to shape the ideology of the latter, and on the ideological level, how fascis[m] influence[d]... the way in which Hindu nationalism developed its own concept of diversity, transforming 'diverse' people into enemies. This is why she focuses on the Moonje-Mussolini meeting, not because she believes in a "guilt-of-association" but because this meeting actually very concretely shaped the evolution of Moonje's ideology, and because direct contacts are the very focus of her work. And since you quote her assertion that the impact [of the trip] on the future development of Hindu militancy can hardly be underestimated without giving us any real reason to doubt it, I must conclude you have conceded on the veracity of this specific point, at least.

I must say, by the way, the flippant characterization of her work as simple "guilt-of-association" is particular galling when you consider (inter alia) the sheer amount of textual evidence she gives for RSS/Hindutva ideologues expressing admiration for specific aspects of Hitlerite and Italian Fascist ideology (some of which you even reference yourself!), for example, this passage from Golwarkar (from the article; not sure if it is in the book), written the year prior to his becoming general secretary of the RSS:

To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.

(She goes on to show that this feeling of admiration for the Jewish policy of Germany seems to have been shared by the entire circle of Hindu nationalism at the end of the 1930s..)

I'm sorry, but if one of the RSS' chief ideologues literally, nakedly saying "that Hitler guy really went off when he put humans in ovens, we should try something like that here" strikes you as mere "guilt-of-association", I must conclude you have made up your mind on this issue and that no sort of evidentiary standard will actually convince you.

Now, regarding this statement:

Fwiw, the idea of "militarily organising the Hindus" against an amorphous other (British/Muslims/...

The idea of ganging up on your (perceived) enemies is not novel in any culture, ever; arguably, even animals do it. That is not what at contention here. Your reductive strawman formulation (and in particular, the conflation of "external" enemies e.g. the British with "internal" ones e.g. for Hindutva, Muslims and to a lesser extent Congress; for Hitler, the Jews) conflates and flattens any and all such categorizations and conceptions of the enemy. Casolari, as an actual historian, is much more nuanced. Her treatment shows how the Hindutva/RSS conception of "internal enemies" was specifically influenced by the Fascist conception of the same— The theme of the 'internal enemy' is a further element of affinity between the ideology of fascism and of Hindu nationalism, expressed by a similar rhetoric (and in particular, how the development of such ideology was mediated by direct contact between Fascist and Hindutva ideologues— the very thing you frivolously dismiss as "guilt-of-association"). In favor of this thesis she cites, inter alia, the many lines of evidence showing the RSS had an at best ambivalent and vacillating attitude towards British rule (the "external" enemy); and correspondingly, the relatively unimportant role they played in the Indian independence movement. By this means she differentiates the RSS from other Indian organizations a very superficial analysis (such as your own) might analogize to the RSS, and in particular she shows how this difference was mediated by means of influence from Italian and German Fascism.

In conclusion— I strongly suspect your analysis would never pass muster at e.g. a peer-reviewed publication, and thus what I am about to suggest is an impossible task; but if you can find reliable sources making the same critique of Casolari as you are, we can certainly discuss working it into the article.

Until such time, the main takeaway here is: your implicit agreement that Kautilya3 misreads the sources (given that both of your readings of her fundamentally and starkly differ); and that Casolari does, in fact, argue at great length for the influence Fascism had on the development of the RSS, your personal feelings about the efficacy of such an argument notwithstanding, and thus she is a perfectly valid citation for the claim that the RSS was inspired and shaped by European Fascism. Brusquedandelion (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

First things first, I am NOT making the claim (see above where I noted my disagreement with K3) that contemporary fascist currents in Europe did not influence the evolution of RSS; that would indeed be nonsensical. Instead, I claim that Casolari (1) fails to appreciate fascism as a global category that seamlessly borrowed from and blended into local pre-existing discourses that were not any less fascist when compared to the supposed European master-template and (2) hence, pursues a line of historiography that is polemical but not fruitful. This is NOT an OR-ish argument; c.f. Zachariah (2020) and Sleben (2021).

Thus, Casolari is a perfectly valid source for inserting a claim of this form into the article. - You need to show that DUE is met with; the genesis of RSS, Hindu Nationalism, etc. have attracted multiple acclaimed scholars. Fwiw, the book came out in 2011 from I libri di Emil and in the years since then, has been cited by about ten scholars.

You use any sort of nuance in Casolari's position as evidence of weakness in her general thesis. - I do not; I simply show how Casolari attributes a lot of developments to Western fascism but also tempers her arguments at the same time. Which your proposed formulation does not.

To my knowledge, reputable sources have not made the argument that Casolari is being "methodologically shabby". - That is one of the arguments of Zachariah (2020) if you read between subtexts.

You have only to compare your assessment of Casolari's text as lacking "cognizance of the complexity of the issue" with her own words. - I am depending on Casolari (2020); not Casolari (2002)

The concluding section of Casolari (2020) notes:

The tremendous impact that Fascism and Nazism had on Hindu nationalism and their long-lasting effects on present Indian politics oblige us, as scholars, to take a stance on the relationship between history and politics and promote an unbiased interpretation of the present through the lens of history.

Nothing in the two-page-long conclusion (or the chapter) of relevance points to any appreciation of the complexities involved. Except the couple of nuanced-lines that she leaves scattered amidst what is a very blunt thesis.

because you know the actual argument being made (that European Fascism, via a variety of means, played an integral role in shaping the rise of the RSS) is essentially unimpeachable. - If you are so sure about the integral aspects, I think sources will be in abundance. Please do bring them!

via archival evidence (none of which you actually mention in your comment) - I did note Casolari's scholarship to be based on "meticulous archival work"; this is not a gotcha-game and you need to read others' arguments carefully.

And since you quote her assertion ... without giving us any real reason to doubt it - So, have you consulted Franziska Roy's dissertation? What does it say; how do we combine her arguments with Casolari's?

but because this meeting actually very concretely shaped the evolution of Moonje's ideology - This is a determinist way of doing history; one can say that Moonje already had these fascist ideas and simply gravitated onto Mussolini because he was a great practitioner (see Zachariah (2020)). So, did Mussolini influence Moonje? Obviously! But, how do we judge the extent - "concretely"? Again, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension that I reject fascist influences on the development of RSS carte blanche.

and in particular, the conflation of "external" enemies - Huh? I am referring to Franziska Roy's dissertation. Once again, have you read it? This is too bizarre to even reply to.

Her treatment shows how the Hindutva/RSS conception of "internal enemies" was specifically influenced by the Fascist conception of the same. - Can you please cite the specific pages in Casolari (2020)?

All in all, you have not even read — much less understood — Zachariah (2020). Else, can you summarize his critiques for me? But more to the point, do you understand that Casolari is not the end-of-everything in this area? She is contradicting Jaffrelot — a far-reputed scholar — in explicit; perhaps, you can let us know what does footnote 84 in Ch. 2 of Casolari (2020) speak to? How do you propose that we resolve all these in lead? Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Such a treatment is something anyone can post on a Wikipedia talk page, which is why it appears here and not in, for example, a review article in a peer-reviewed historical journal, because such drive-by analysis would never fly in the latter. Yes, Casolari permits that the RSS was not singularly inspired by European Fascism. But no one was arguing otherwise. You have only to compare your assessment of Casolari's text as lacking "cognizance of the complexity of the issue" with her own words, which roundly put to rest any such characterization of her work [...] I strongly suspect your analysis would never pass muster at e.g. a peer-reviewed publication, and thus what I am about to suggest is an impossible task; but if you can find reliable sources making the same critique of Casolari as you are —

Casolari is somewhat quick to label things in terms of clear-cut political categories and rather downplays the fascinating hybridity of Moonje’s thinking.
— Footnote 35, p. 679 in Ali Raza & Franziska Roy (2015) Paramilitary Organisations in Interwar India, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 38:4

Fyi, @Brusquedandelion. TrangaBellam (talk) 21:02, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm a little pressed for time right now so it's gonna take me another day or two to respond to your other comments, but I'll respond to this one now.

You are once again arguing against a strawman: I am not saying that every other scholar has a view that is a carbon copy of Casolari's; nor that no one has ever disagreed with her about anything. To understand the difference between your critique of Casolari and that of the paper you yourself are citing, we only have to look at the sentence that this footnote hangs on:

Moonje had drawn inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including a visit to a Balilla school in Italy.

as well as the first part of the footnote in question, excised by your comment:

On Moonje’s sojourns in Fascist Italy, see Marzia Casolari, 'Hindutva’s Foreign Tie-Up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence', in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 35, no. 4 (2000), pp. 21828...

In other words, the authors are citing Casolari in favor of the proposition that the Balilla schools of Fascist Italy influenced Moonje and the Hindu nationalist discourse more generally. Later sentences from the same source affirm this:

And there was Dr. B.S. Moonje, an important member of the (Responsivist) National party, ex-Congressman, Hindu Mahasabha leader and rabid communalist, who admired Mussolini, blood and soil ideologies, and the expansionist drive of Nazi Germany.

And, crucially, this paragraph from the conclusion:

What is certain is that these organisations were both inspired and driven by the political climate within India as well as by developments elsewhere on the globe, and particularly in Europe where fascist ideas, movements and governments had become well entrenched by the 1930s...This, in turn, raises the question of whether these movements, inspired as they were by the interwar fascist moment, can be included in a ‘global history of fascism’.

(emphasis my own; and as for the last question, the authors answer, resoundingly: yes— but more on that later)

So by your own source, yes, Hindu nationalism, Moonje, and by extension the RSS were all influenced and inspired by, inter alia, European Fascist movements. The repeated use of the latter verb is especially ironic given the sentence under debate. Were they influenced and inspired by other things too? Certainly! You are welcome to propose additions to the article that speak of other such influences as well, but more on that in a bit.

It is true that Raza & Roy differ from (e.g. Casolari) in the specific relative emphasis they place on local vis-a-vis "foreign" influence, and the extent to which different "local fascisms" differed; in particular they warn that ignoring such difference is to lose much of [Fascism's] malleability, discontinuity, and the manifold ways in which it appealed to actors across the globe. You are welcome to note this in any proposed edit to the article.

Where does this leave us in terms of the Wikipedia article? As I have repeatedly stated, I am perfectly ok with expanding and refining the article to elaborate on the varying scholarly positions on the specific ways in which European Fascism inspired RSS (or more generally, Hindu nationalist) ideology. But you'll notice that what both Casolari and Raza & Roy concur on is:

1. That European Fascist movements inspired the chief ideologues of the RSS and the Hindu nationalist discourse that gave rise to it— both very specifically use this very word.
2. The importance of situating the RSS and similar paramilitary movements, notwithstanding the many differences between them... in a 'global history of fascism' (from the latter). Simply removing one of the few sentences in the entire article that attempts to make such an analysis, without replacing it with anything, results in a strictly worse off article.

Thus, any proposed edit to the article, insofar as it cites these sources, must acknowledge both of these facts. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:23, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Sigh, why don't you read what I write? To quote me (again), First things first, I am NOT making the claim (see above where I noted my disagreement with K3) that contemporary fascist currents in Europe did not influence the evolution of RSS; that would indeed be nonsensical.

Simply removing one of the few sentences in the entire article that attempts to make such an analysis, without replacing it with anything, results in a strictly worse off article. - No, ideally, the lead shall reflect the body. And, even if I ignore that, accuracy is vital. Also, I reiterate Kautilya3's distinction between "inspire" and "influence"; RSS was undoubtably influenced by a fascist repertoire of ideas — a global localism of the times, as Bakhle calls it — but certainly not inspired. Roy/Raza's usage of the word do not justify your's because they nuance the picture a hell lot to the point where such semantics do not matter.

Btw, I finally located a copy of Roy's dissertation (2013; UoWarwick) which takes an underhanded dig at Casolari (p. 136; footnote 69):

Casolari made much of the connections between Italian Fascism and the Mahasabaite Moonje to proof the enduring and committed nature of the fascist tendencies of the Sangh Parivar overall.

I can cite atleast another German scholar — and another upcoming publication, in a couple of years — which takes issues with Casolari's methodologies and overarching conclusions.

Now, for someone who wrote such a blunt line in the lead, your unsatisfactory emendation — having waxed eloquent about how my critique (then unsourced though I referred to certain scholars) made no sense and unfairly represented Casolari — is interesting. Perhaps, once you get off your high horse and start reading relevant literature — than accuse every dissenting editor of being aligned to Hindutva —, we can make more progress. Do recall that I had pointed to Roy's thesis, Zachariah (2020), et al in my very first critique of Casolari which you (obviously) did not bother to consult. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

that Hitler guy really went off when he put humans in ovens, we should try something like that here Small nit: The putting-humans-in-ovens thing had not started yet at the time (at the end of the 30s). A better paraphrase would be "that Hitler guy really went off when he forced humans to wear yellow stars, took away their rights, stole their property, beat them up, locked them up and slew them when he felt like it, we should try something like that here". --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:39, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Bakhle

Even more important, the twenties and thirties saw the germination of a series of ethnonationalist movements in numerous places around the globe— what we might call global localisms. In 1892, Bengali literary critic and writer Chandranath Basu coined the term Hindutva, describing it as the best expression of the fundamental characteristics of “Hindu-ness.” A few years later, Rabindranath Tagore wrote an essay called “Hindutva.” Around the same time, B. G. Tilak, Savarkar’s hero and inspiration, also wrote an essay in Marathi on Hindutva—a term he used to refer to the Hindu community. Some twenty years later, when Savarkar took the same term and injected it with steroidal rage against a Muslim other, he was part of a larger movement. In dif­ferent parts of the world, charismatic men were defining the boundaries, both physical and cultural, of their lands. In the wake of the First World War, extreme right-wing pan-European revivalist movements and organizations challenged the basic premises of liberal democracies in favor of a fascist-tinged conservatism that usually started by defining who was and was not genuinely part of the nation.

Such concepts and movements were present in India too. There was a perceptible global zeitgeist and striking resemblances between Savarkar’s concept of Hindutva and the earlier German concept of Volkisch, the subsequent cult of Romanita in Italy, or even Ferenc Szalasi’s Hungarism. A little further afield, the academic Karelia Society advocated the purging of non-Finnish influences from Finnish life and culture, hoping to create a greater Finland whose boundaries went east as far as the Urals. All these groups romanticized a deep connection to native soil, privileged the country over the city, and advocated a palingenetic renewal of ethnic and, in some cases, racial purity alongside the removal of foreign influences.

From colonial India to Finland and beyond, in other words, the 1920s saw a global emergence of intense localisms. Scholars have debated how to define and describe these movements and ideologies. Were they fascist or semifascist movements? Were they proto-fascist or fascist-tinged, or did they partake discriminatingly of a “fascist repertoire” of ideas? Whatever the case, these movements and ideologies were bolstered by political and cultural organizations and cult-like secret societies. In Romania in 1927, Corneliu Codreanu founded the Legion of the Archangel Michael, which aimed to regenerate Romania and create a new spirit—a cultural and religious revolution that would bring forth the omul nou (new man). India had the Tarun Hindu Sabha, founded in 1923 by Savarkar’s older brother, and the RSS, founded in 1925. The Hitler Youth, Italian Youth, Hungarian Youth, Austrian Youth, Romanian Youth, and the RSS swayamsevaks (volunteer members) all imagined a new man who was young, militant, energetic, and forward-looking. This new man also aimed to forge a noncosmopolitan sense of identity and enact an identitarian and exclusionary politics.
— Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, Janaki Bakhle, Princeton University Press, 2024, p. 12-14

Sadly, for Brusquedandelion, these debates carry no meaning. When all you have is a hammer, perhaps everything is bound to be a nail. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

My issue with them is that they are just blatantly trying to push their POV with complete disregard for intelectual honesty. Throwing all sorts of accusations, twisting others words, strawmanning, creating their own interpretation of policies, its just ridiculous. An editor who accuses others of WP:CIR issues then goes ahead and claims that we cannot find sources unreliable unless the source calls itself unreliable. What a joke. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 09:38, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

An editor who accuses others of WP:CIR issues then goes ahead and claims that we cannot find sources unreliable unless the source calls itself unreliable

You should cease and desist from making libelous accusations like this. I said that you can find sources unreliable if reliable sources concur in this (from the perspective of editing the article anyways). Unlike TrangaBellam, you have made no attempt to offer up alternate sources whatsoever, though of course you are all too happy to latch on to others who do the legwork for you.

The irony here is that I think you will find that you very much disagree with the sources TrangaBellam has offered, in that they almost invariably characterize the RSS ideology as Fascistic, Fascism-adjacent, or far-right (all characterizations you have explicitly disputed) and cite the influence of European Fascism on the RSS, even if they debate various details about the nature of this influence. Perhaps this is why TrangaBellam alone has actually tried to offer alternate sources, because you are aware that the body of scholarship is at odds with the Hindutva-apologetic POV you are pushing.

As I have pointed out to TrangaBellam, while the objections they have lodged with the previous formulation certainly have merit, the result of this discussion so far has been to permit POV-pushers like yourself to completely strip any mention of an influence of European Fascist movements on the development of the RSS from the article, which is not at all what you see amongst the reliable sources. This results in an objectively worse article.

complete disregard for intelectual honesty

I would like to take this time to reflect that this user repeatedly, with great chutzpah, lied about what the WP:STABLE version of the page was, and then when contradicted on this point by multiple other editors, instead of apologizing or admitting fault, changed their tune to argue instead that WP:STABLE doesn't actually matter here. Or will you now deny that that happened too? Brusquedandelion (talk) 03:54, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Sadly for both of us, you continue to misconstrue my position. You are gesturing vaguely at the existence of debate, but when it comes to writing a Wikipedia article, the existence of debate does not allow you to summarily dismiss positions you don't like! The article body, as written, overwhelmingly relies on Jaffrelot as a source for what little discussion it has of this topic, especially after removal of the disputed lead sentence. What's particularly telling is the strikingly defensive way in which the article summarizes this discourse: it introduces criticisms of the idea (that the RSS is Fascist/Fascist-inspired) before ever actually introducing that position in the first place, or telling us who argues in favor of it and what their arguments are. For example, the Reception section has this as its cold open:

Jaffrelot observes that although the RSS with its paramilitary style of functioning and its emphasis on discipline has sometimes been seen by some as "an Indian version of fascism"

That is the full extent of the coverage this article gives to alternate views: the briefest summary, as worded by a detractor of this view, attributed to an unspecified WP:WEASEL-y "some," followed immediately by a rejection of it, all on the basis of the work of this single scholar (the following, brief paragraph cites Jyotirmaya Sharma in service of a similar idea, but again, no coverage whatsoever of the very position they are critiquing!). Notably, I refer not just to the views of Casolari, but also of numerous other scholars (e.g. Raza & Roy, who you cite above).

This is a sure sign of POV-pushing. The actual manner in which Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written when there is a scholarly debate on an issue is by fairly represent[ing] all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. The article doesn't do this, and however flawed the now-deleted formulation, it was one of the few sentences in the article that did not pretty much entirely rely on Jaffrelot as a source (or worse, the RSS itself), and advanced a different view than him.

All in all, your claim that these debates have no value to me might have been true if the article fairly represented the debate, and I was trying to modify the article to remove one side of that debate. But in fact rather the opposite is happening: we have an article that places an WP:UNDUE amount of emphasis on the views of a single scholar, without really addressing alternate positions, and we have an edit that attempts to remove one of the few sentences that so much as gestures at the views of the opposite camp.

Now, I think Vanamonde is right that we are getting lost in forum style debates, so I would like to return us to the question of how to concretely improve this article. To that end: at this point several sources have been mentioned up and down this page, and there are others. I invite the involved parties to take this opportunity to briefly summarize the positions of whichever sources they wish to. We can then discuss how to incorporate these into the body of the article. I am working on this presently myself. Brusquedandelion (talk) 23:43, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Kautilya3 said what

Since my name is being mentioned repeatedly by various editors, claiming this or that, I am making my position clear. The only thing I have done so far is to contest the problematic half-sentence in the lead, which is at the top of this section. I did, and I do, regard the sources cited there as Eurocentric, in the sense that they overstate the impact of European fascism on Hindu nationalism. Eurocentricism is a form of bias, and I expect such sources to be treated as per WP:BIASED. Christophe Jaffrelot doesn't have such bias, even though he is European, and the last source cited there is Eurocentric, even though he isn't a European. Jaffrelot is also an authoritative source on Hindu nationalism with thousands of citations on Google Scholar. So I expect all other sources to be validated against what he writes. Other scholars can of course disagree with him, but they can't ignore him. If they do so, they are substandard and will get reduced WP:WEIGHT.

I don't have a position on whether Hindu nationalis is a "fascism". I know that various positions exist, and there is unlikely to be a consensus on that issue. I also don't deny that European fascisms had influences on Hindu nationalism, though the precise nature and extent of such influences is debatable. I also don't accept circumstantial evidence of the kind that say X read about Y and, so, he/she was influenced by Y. The influences need to be demonstrated in what X actually did. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:53, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Other scholars can of course disagree with him, but they can't ignore him

If you actually read Casolari, you would note that she references Jaffrelot repeatedly— a main goal of the article cited by the now-deleted sentence was to refute a number of his claims. Unfortunately it was clear from the beginning you stopped reading Casolari a few paragraphs in, when you confused an introductory remark with a conclusion.

Now, I don't think you've read Jaffrelot either, but in the spirit of WP:AGF, let us suppose you have. Since you are so enamored of him, here's what he has to say about where the Indians learned to bake bread:

In fact, the RSS followed Savarkar in importing from the West the notion of ethnic nationalism... Emulation of a foreign model of nationhood proceeded under the guise of a reinterpretation of a quintessentially Hindu institution, the sect, which offered a familiar framework into which to introduce nationalistic values.

— Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics (1996), p. 50

I should sincerely hope you do not backpedal and accuse Jaffrelot of being Eurocentric, since you just at great length sung his praises.

You might be shocked at such a formulation, but only if your understanding of Jaffrelot is based on this Wikipedia article, which, I'm afraid, repeatedly and continuously misreads and misconstrues Jaffrelot. I will leave that subject for an upcoming, longer post, which I will pair with a proposed revision of the Reception section— stay tuned.

There is another problem with your comment, though: it expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of how WP:WEIGHT works. While it happens to be the case that (I'm pretty sure) nearly every source discussed here so far does reference Jaffrelot, it bears noting that WP:WEIGHT does not single out any single scholar or source as the benchmark against which all other sources are compared; indeed, there no Wikipedia policy justifying a formula like "if a source doesn't mention the magnificent work of Dr. Dude-Who-Agrees-With-Me (Dr. Dude for short), it isn't a reliable source"— regardless of how impeccable you personally find the scholarship of Dr. Dude, or how many innumerable citations they have. Rather, WP:WEIGHT demands that we fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Concretely, here, that means summarizing the views of Jaffrelot (because his is indeed a significant viewpoint), as well as those that disagree with him, in proportion to their prominence, even if some of those sources fully ignore Jaffrelot (though, again, I'm not sure how much this is actually a thing in practice).

Regrettably, that's not what the article does right now. Instead, what little analysis it has of this particular issue relies overwhelmingly on just Jaffrelot, and indeed on an inaccurate representation of what Jaffrelot actually states. But I'll write more on that later; for the moment, I just wanted to point out that there is no policy basis for establishing the sort of litmus test you have put forth here, whereby Jaffrelot must be the starting point of any source for us to even consider it; whereby all other sources are to be validated against this single scholar. In fact, not only is there no policy basis for this; it is directly contrary to the principles of WP:DUE.

One final point,

Eurocentricism is a form of bias, and I expect such sources to be treated as per WP:BIASED

If reliable sources claim (for example) Casolari (or another source) is being biased, as you claim, the article can also state that with attribution, but your belief that a source is biased, whether or not reliable sources even substantiate this belief, is expressly not a reason for discounting such sources. Per Wikipedia policy, biased sources are not inherently disallowed based on bias alone. Brusquedandelion (talk) 07:02, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Fwiw, Jaffrelot's latest exposition on the topic is The Hindu Nationalist Strategy of Stigmatisation and Emulation of ‘Threatening Others’: An Indian Style Fascism? (Routledge; 2016). TrangaBellam (talk) 07:36, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the academic institution I am affiliated with does not seem to have a copy of this book, nor do I seem to be able to locate a copy via, uh, less orthodox means; I could probably get a copy if I really wanted to, but not easily any time soon. I now see that this work is embedded within Politics of the 'other' in India and China : western concepts in non-western contexts (ed. Lion König and Bidisha Chaudhuri), which it appears my institution has a copy of; I've arranged to pick it up and likely will in the next day or so. However, I should ask: are you specifically bringing up this work to claim Jaffrelot has revised his views in the quoted passage above, or just suggesting the work to me? FWIW, the passage is from the very work cited in this Wikipedia article itself. Brusquedandelion (talk) 09:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks TrangaBellam. That looks like an extract from the first chapter of his 1996 book, which everybody can read on archive.org:

• Jaffrelot, Christophe (1996), The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, ISBN 978-1850653011 – via archive.org

Here is a quote that I selected for its relevance to the present discussion: (Ethnic nationalism is not relevant)

On some occasions, such as the festival of Dasahara [which is the anniversary of the founding of the RSS], they marched in step through the streets holding their lathis to demonstrate the strength of the movement. These elements suggest that the RSS should be regarded as 'an Indian version of fascism'. As far as the formative years of the RSS are concerned,[168] this expression is especially relevant if it implies that, while the RSS belongs, with European fascism, to a general category of anti-liberal movements, it also represents a specifically Indian phenomenon which is not simply a reproduction of European fascism.[170] The RSS had already assumed its final form by the time of the first contacts between the Hindu nationalists and the European fascists, and neither Hedgewar nor Golwalkar developed a theory of the state and the race, a crucial element in fascism and Nazism. (pp. 50-51)

Even I marched through the streets along with all my schoolmates on the Independence Dary or the Republic Day, carrying Indian flags. Little did I know that I was being 'fascist'!-- Kautilya3 (talk) 09:57, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

That looks like an extract from the first chapter of his 1996 book,

Ummm... you know this is the same book that I quoted from earlier right? If it is true that it is simply an extract from the 1996 book, I'm not sure why TrangaBellam suggested it to me immediately after I referenced the book, as if there was some "update" that might of relevance there... perhaps TB can clarify?

Here is a quote that I selected for its relevance to the present discussion: (Ethnic nationalism is not relevant)

A manifestly absurd and self-contradictory remark from someone who kicked off this spate by declaring that Who knows, may the Indians taught the Europeans cultural nationalism?, but letting bygones be bygones for the moment— I trust, when the edit protection expires in 2ish days, you will not attempt to contest any edits I make to the article which argue for the Western origins of the RSS' nationalism, which cite that authoritative source on Hindu nationalism, the last bastion of non-Eurocentricity in l'académie, His Scholarly Eminence, Christophe Jaffrelot? For if it is true that this particular point is not relevant to this specific discussion (and putting aside the natural question this raises— why did you bring it up initially in the first place then, K3?), it clearly is relevant to the composition of the article as a whole. Brusquedandelion (talk) 10:34, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

But I assume you did neither conceptualize an organic völkisch movement nor wish to produce a horde of "young, militant, energetic, and forward-looking" new men. Though, in fairness, some primordial strands of these elements were already circulating in India since late 1800s. In any case, you can see Tobias Delfs' Hindu-Nationalismus und europäischer Faschismus: Vergleich, Transfer und Beziehungsgeschicht (Verlag; 2008) which documents the influences of Fascist nodes of thought on RSS luminaries to some precision but, like Casolari, ignores the S. Asian context in totality.

I, fwiw, do not subscribe to Jaffrelot who approaches the question using, what is called in the field, a fascist-minimum approach. The answer lies somewhere in the middle and if left to me, I will wait for the publication of Ali Raza's new monograph which looks at "fascist paramilitary organizations in colonial India". TrangaBellam (talk) 10:38, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I, fwiw, do not subscribe to Jaffrelot who approaches the question using, what is called in the field, a fascist-minimum approach.

I agree with you there, but hopefully we do not need to wait on Raza's monograph to edit this article, which does overwhelmingly rely on Jaffrelot and by extension his fascist-minimum approach (to the extent it covers this topic at all). There are plenty of scholars that are at odds with him and do grade RSS ideology as a type of Fascism who we can cite, including Raza elsewhere. Brusquedandelion (talk) 10:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Brusquedandelion, you need to stop using this talk page as a debating shop. What matters is that the italicised sentence in my quote from Jaffrelot squarely contradicts the disputed half-sentence in the lead. So what is your solution? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:35, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Replying to TrangaBellam: I was also a sergent of the NCC, which was, I suppose, Nehru's feeble attempt to counter the spread of RSS.

The reason for mentioning this is the frequency with which supposed scholars mention the parades as evidence of "far-right" or "fascist" nature of the RSS, without realizing how superficial a resemblance it is. For example, Critics still fear the influence of a more militant sister organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose assertive and military-style parades are reminiscent of far-right behaviour in other countries. Even Jaffrelot seems to have missed the fact that Dasahara (Dussehra) is the anniversary of the RSS, when some kind of public display of their organisation could be expected. Otherwise, parading is not a regular activity of the RSS, as far as I know. Did you notice the citation to Nehru for 'Indian version of fascism'? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:28, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Did such Nazi-like parades, salutes and slogans exist before the contact with the European fascist movements? M.Bitton (talk) 12:44, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Please look for "Ian Talbot" on this talk page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 13:08, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

I have, but that doesn't answer my question. M.Bitton (talk) 13:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

But those are answers given by WP:RS. When did they parades, salutes and slogans start in Europe? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:02, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

The fact of the matter is that the RSS started mimicking the European fascist movements right after they made contact with them. M.Bitton (talk) 19:04, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Otherwise, parading is not a regular activity of the RSS, as far as I know. - No, you are quite wrong. I can give an answer but it will be very elongated and OR-ish; perhaps at your t/p.

Btw, I think there are a hundred and one ways to improve this article without being so intensely fixated on how to cover the nature of European-fascist (?) influences on evolution of RSS in the lead. Editors perhaps shall focus on them and wait out for Raza's upcoming monograph which is centered on the very question. That's the last comment from me in this section. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Otherwise, parading is not a regular activity of the RSS, as far as I know. Strange, because Google thinks otherwise. — kashmīrī ^TALK 03:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

If Google is good enough, why do we write Wikipedia? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 11:32, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

You keep responding to the weakest possible argument made by people who disagree with you, and always in a way that fails to substantively address their core argument. The disagreement here isn't analytical, it doesn't involve any sort of higher-order thinking, it is a base empirical question that even Google can debunk, in three seconds flat. Also, there are many reasons we write Wikipedia, but righting great wrongs isn't one of them, so if the whole world were fictiously inventing RSS marches out of nothing, we would simply have to report such marches as fact. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:00, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

It's regrettable (but perhaps not surprising, given that you consistently pick the weakest possible version of an argument to attack) that you've homed in the marches, and not, you know, the multiple instances of RSS ideologues expressing clear admiration for Hitlerite policies, and speaking of them in a straightforwardly aspirational way. Brusquedandelion (talk) 15:02, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

References

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Lead paragraph

[Link to edit: ]

@Gotitbro My recent copyedit clearly does not violate WP:LABEL. The three words in question, an astonishingly minor point for an editor to dispute, and frankly disappointing, have appeared in wikivoice in the article’s lead for several years, with no record of any challenge on the talk page. Moreover, WP:DNRNC does not constitute a valid basis for reverting an edit. — EarthDude (Talk) 19:39, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@EarthDude: To repeat my message from above. Rather than citing essays follow as basic a policy as BRD. BRD and LABEL (explained in depth above) both apply equally well here, you are pushing up an even more contentious label after your proposal for a much more milder one failed. To then edit war and call it a copyedit is a basic defiance of enwiki procedure and logic. Your edits are neither minor nor copyedits, they are a continuation of continued edit warring over failed content proposals. Gotitbro (talk) 19:48, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

This has no bearing on my previous proposal or on the discussion above. The fact that Hindutva was inspired by European fascism is not disputed. Nor is this a contentious characterization: for it to be so, it would need to be unsourced, poorly sourced, or actively challenged, none of which is the case here. (It would also need to be a "label" in the first place, which it is not.) Finally, it is deeply ironic for the editor who is primarily engaged in edit warring to accuse others of the same behavior. — EarthDude (Talk) 19:59, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

This is a WP:STABLE lead: yes; would you need consensus after being challenged for a edit at a contentious topic: yes; label/contentious applies: yes (regardless of whether it is sourced, longstanding or in wikivoice); all this renewed push for an even stronger label (fascist) after your proposal for a relatively milder one (far-right) failed. Quoting from above "To think then a even a more stronger version of much the same can be pushed upto something as important as the WP:LEADSENTENCE by claiming a right of copyedit is to of course defy basic enwiki procedure and logic."

"Not disputed": regardless of what the second lead para states (citing certain scholars). Concentional wisdom in South Asian studies field has always been/still is later contacts with the European fascist movement of an already consolidated movement (of religious nationalism) under British rule. Though not to digress as contentious/label et. al. as stated would apply regardless.

Irony would be were it not for the fact that you have been attempting to edit war to unilaterally overhaul the lead for the last several months. Slow edit warring is still edit warring. Gotitbro (talk) 20:20, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

What are you even talking about? This dispute has absolutely nothing to do with my previous proposal or any discussion above. No one is calling Hindutva fascist in wikivoice. This is about the undisputed fact that Hindutva was inspired by European fascism, something which is widely accepted by reliable scholarship. You have also given WP:STABLE, WP:LEADSENTENCE, and WP:LABEL, all of which you have misrepresented. LABEL does not apply here, primarily because we are not "labelling" anything here, not to mention the fact that contrary to your exaggerated portrayal of the policy, it is superseded if there is widespread support among reliable sources. A paragraph in an article having been STABLE for a few months does not mean a block on editors can make good faith improvements in it. LEADSENTENCE does not even apply here, MOS:OPEN does. I suggest you not throw around baseless accusations against other editors, such as me allegedly engaging in "slow edit warring" over "several months" to "unilaterally overhaul the lead". When done over multiple articles as you have, it really only shows a WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior. — EarthDude (Talk) 14:47, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

The issue of inspiration from European fascist movements was thoroughly discussed at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh page (see the transcluded section below), and deleted in March 2024. It slipped my notice that its copy was still lurking on this page. It should be removed here as well. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:39, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

It turns out that the whole thing was a sock edit to start with. We are getting hit by WhatsApp intellectuals. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

All I see from the discussion at the RSS talk page is no community consensus for your removal of reliably sourced content. The only understandable resolution of the discussion that I see would be that the disputed text be attributed rather than stated in wikivoice. However, what occurred at that discussion is fairly irrelevant to the one we are having here, as it was at a completely different article and the discussion had little to do with the inspiration of European fascism when it comes to the ideology of Hindutva. — EarthDude (Talk) 17:10, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Can you prove that it is "irrelevant"? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:17, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion was about the RSS and whether or not that was inspired by European fascism, not about the Hindutva ideology. In what way is that relevant here? — EarthDude (Talk) 04:35, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

You know very well that "Hindutva" is the name given to the ideology of the RSS and there are plenty of references to "Hindutva" itself in the transcluded discussion, even though it is also sometimes referenced as "Hindu nationalism". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:51, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

That edit is sourced to multiple reliable sources and is years old. It is ridiculous how you thought of removing the edit by falsifying WP:BANREVERT all of now, and demeaned the contrary (to your edits) to be coming from "WhatsApp intellectuals" when that institutes belongs to pro-Hindutva individuals.

Hindutva is a fascist ideology and there is no doubt about it. There is a universal concensus about it. Disagreeing with that is clearly Hindu nationalist POV pushing. Orientls (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

Hindutva, the RSS, and Hindu nationalism are related concepts, but they are not the same. This is precisely why Wikipedia maintains three separate articles on them. The discussion you cite focuses primarily on whether the RSS was influenced by European fascist organizations. Only a handful of editors even mentioned Hindutva or Hindu nationalism. You cannot derive a community consensus from a few isolated comments in a broader discussion. Sources or the opinions of editors on the RSS or Hindu nationalism cannot be used to impose a non-existent consensus on Hindutva, and the reverse is equally true. — EarthDude (Talk) 04:36, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

There isn't much doubt that the early Hindu nationalist movements drew some inspiration from European political movements of the time - I don't see any source which claims they arrived at their ideology entirely independently. I do know of sources which dispute the degree of inspiration. We ought to be able to phrase the lead in a way that finesses that distinction, rather than engaging in a weeks-long slow edit-war. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:42, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

After multiple rounds, Orientls finally takes ownership of the disputed content.

Orientls, please provide quotations from the cited sources that justify the content. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:51, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

The sources support the content. First source says "Hindutva, especially in their early stages, exemplify a process of ideological borrowing from both European fascism and a fabrication of "Vedic Hinduism" that defies the binarism of local/global." Second source states, "the archival evidence presented by Marzia Casolari conclusively shows how much the proponents of Hindutva admired European fascism; liberally borrowed from it and this influence continues even today." This was also addressed in 2024. THEZDRX _{(User) | (Contact)} 15:59, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Neither of them implies that European fascism inspired Hindutva. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:54, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Agree with Vanamonde93 here. Early Hindu nationalism was influenced by contemporary European political movements from that time, but that was one of several influences (equally, it was a response to European colonization of India and was also shaped by Indian Muslim nationalism, which it in turn also influenced). That is also what both the cited sources say (at this point I also have to ask for better sources, because neither of those two publishers seem to be of the highest possible repute for this sort of stuff). We need a rewrite of that sentence, preferably based on better and more recent sources (though the current ones are also fine). UnpetitproleX (talk) 00:20, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

I am not even convinced that the "early Hindu nationalism" (whatever that means) was influenced by European political movements, particularly Fascism. Both the history of the Savarkar brand of nationalism and the RSS ideology are well-studied, and we don't see any discontinuities that need to be explained by postulation of European imports. Nationalism of some form already existed in India before their inception, and so did Hindu and Muslim communalism. There have been pretty regular Hindu-Muslim communal riots ever since the British took over the present-day Uttar Pradesh (originally called "Northwestern Provinces"). Jaffrelot has shown how practially every element of the RSS ideology was indigenous, arising from local factors and traditions. Scholars claiming inspiration/influence of Fascism look like people with a hammer in hand trying to find nails to hit on (a comment made by TrangaBellam in the section below.

Casolari's analysis, which is supposedly best explained in her book, does seem quite circumstantial. (See Guha's summary.) There could have been some level of impact on Moonje, but what impact Moonje had on Indian Hindutva is not explored. More seriously, Casolari seems to ignore the antecedents of Italian & German fascisms, which probably did influence Savarkar a great deal. Jaffrelot broadly categorises them as "ethnic nationalism", which both of those countries made use of but Britian & France did not. Zachariah writes:

A number of these ideas, in which race and Volk were operative categories, existed in earlier versions from the previous century. They lent themselves to a fascist repertoire[5] that found its conjuncture between the world wars––a repertoire that was drawn upon by a number of movements entitled to use of the adjective “fascist.”

and further:

The longer history of engaging with ideas of race and Volk in India and the world, which was part of the same history rather than a separate one, dating from the mid- to late nineteenth century, was drawn on by both Germany and India. And the coalescing of ideological frameworks that were recognisably fascist or Nazi took place in a context whereby the lesser strains in a worldwide framework of thinking clustered around the more successful strains, borrowing and adapting from them and thereby “working towards the Nazis”[6]––and the Italian Fascists before them––in a voluntary Gleichschaltung. But this adaptation did not altogether abandon its right to manoeuvre, to select from a “‘fascist repertoire”––and later to remould it to create new languages of legitimation.

And, towards the end, he concludes:

Although the connections of proponents of a militant Hindu nationalism (now simply referred to as the Sangh Parivar or Hindutvabadi) as a völkisch nationalism with Fascism and Nazism, not to mention with its leaders, are well worked out,[116] it remains unclear how much the appeal of the Hindu ideologues M.S. Golwalkar, K.B. Hegdewar, or V.D. Savarkar actually depended upon the borrowings of their ideas from fascists, rather than the similarities that they recognised and perhaps reformulated in the language of fascism.

So there was a certain "fascist reportoire" of ideas that came from the developments in the 19th century that both Europe and Hindutva drew upon in the 20th century. Many of the similarities could be due to these shared antecedents. It remains unclear how much borrowing of real fascism occurred.

I don't see anything here that is lead-worthy. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:04, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

It is not our job to examine or investigate the evidence provided in sources. We simply summarize what most sources say. Challenging reliable and peer-reviewed work is by definition WP:OR, and stating something like "Scholars claiming inspiration/influence of Fascism look like people with a hammer in hand trying to find nails to hit on" is downright ridiculous. Also, I would like to once again remind you that this is neither about nationalism, Hindu nationalism, or communalism, and that it is about the very specific political ideology of Hindutva. And most sources say that Hindutva was in part inspired by European fascism, that it borrowed a lot of ideas and concepts from it, and that it was closely affilliated. In addition to the two sources already given, countless other sources also state the same:

1. Leidig, Eviane (2020). "Hindutva as a variant of right-wing extremism". Patterns of Prejudice. 4 (3): 215–237.

From the movement's beginning, Hindutva ideologues sought connections with Fascist Italy. During the 1920s, Mussolini's regime had considerable influence on them as regional newspapers in India spread news of the transformation of Italian society. The appeal of militarization in order to create order in society was seen as an attractive alternative to democracy, which was viewed as being too closely connected to British values.

Adding,

Inspired by Hitler's actions in Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland as embodying 'the true Nation concept', Golwalkar promoted race as being fundamental to the Hindu nation. The vision of disciplined nationalism under a superior leader, whereby the nation is a collective unity, led to National Socialism being an attractive model for Hindutva ideologues who rejected British individualism. Such racist attitudes led Golwalkar to withdraw his book from circulation in 1948, given the negative attention it had received—it was one of the most frequently quoted Hindutva texts—and the negative effect it had had on the RSS's reputation.

Further,

In Hindutva, representations of 'the people' are thus central to the relationship between belonging and the imagined community. Described as 'pure' and 'authentic', the idea of the Volk, with its Germanic origins, can be embraced in Hindutva, as can a focus on the Aryan past. Inspired by the emergence of race science as a field of enquiry in the colonial academy, as well as Orientalist philosophy, Aryanism developed as a 'racial theory of Indian civilization' based on primordialist and evolutionary conceptions of nationalism... Indeed, 'the Third Reich embraced a range of pagan, esoteric, and Indo-Aryan religious doctrines that buttressed its racial, political, and ideological goals'; these included a 'belief in the ethno-religious connections between the lost Ario-Germanic civilization of the Thule (Atlantis) and an Indo-Aryan civilization centred in northern India'. Hindutva as a result maintains a continuing interest in connecting notions of Arya dharm, or the 'Hindu race', to European conceptualizations of the 'Aryan race' as a source of legitimation. Its guiding premise advocates a civilizational superiority based on racial characteristics... By extension, being a Hindu literally equates to Blut und Boden: 'a "natural" geography and sacred ties of blood'.

Finally,

Like the Italians, the German authorities engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship with Hindutva actors. Nazi agents translated Mein Kampf into Indian languages, conducted covert intelligence operations and radio broadcasts, and distributed pro-Nazi propaganda materials to sympathetic press agencies in India. Hindutva writings circulated in German newspapers in exchange for articles favouring Germany's 'Jewish policy' in regional Indian newspapers. Nazi propagandists and German businesses generously funded these newspapers, while others were owned by organizations, such as the Hindu Mahasabha, that openly advocated National Socialism for India and a 'Hindu Fuehrer'.

2. Jal, Murzban (2015). "Fetishism of Hinduism and Its Secret Thereof: A Retort to the Indian Fascists". Economic and Political Weekly. 50 (15): 60–68.

M S Golwalkar (1906–1973) was the second Sarsanghchalak (Supreme Chief) of the fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the National Volunteer Corps and penned his We, or, Our Nationhood Defined (1939) and Bunch of Thoughts (1966) where he modelled his idea of India after Nazi Germany.

3. Wilson, Kalpana (2023). "From dematerialising race to distorting decoloniality: Development-as-imperialism and Hindu supremacy". Global Discourse. 4 (2–3): 384–405.

From its inception, Hindutva directly drew inspiration from, and sought to replicate, European fascism. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the cadre-based organisation at the heart of the network of Hindu-supremacist groups that includes Modi's ruling BJP, was formed in 1925, modelled on Mussolini's fascist youth organisation. Hindutva ideologue M.S. Golwalkar notoriously hailed Nazi Germany as a manifestation of 'race pride at its highest', which India should emulate in relation to its Muslim minority community.

— EarthDude (Talk) 13:20, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I have revised the statement from "Inspired by European fascism" to "Borrowing ideas and concepts from European fascism, the Hindutva movement was affiliated with Italian fascism and Nazism during the interwar period and the Second World War." This wording more accurately reflects the consensus of reliable sources. In any case, it would be more appropriate to place this information in the lead paragraph. The second paragraph focuses on the academic debate surrounding the definition and interpretation of Hindutva, so its historical origins feels misplaced there. Furthermore, given the significance of these ideological influences in the history of Hindutva, this would be better suited to the lead paragraph per WP:DUE. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:43, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

I suppose this discussion is what you were referring to in your edit war. Can you show where you took into account the Jaffrelot's counter, as demanded in my pov-inline tag? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:17, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Kautilya3 First of all, stop edit warring here. Secondly, what are you even opposing? You added a note which said that Jaffrelot's position on the Hindutva movement's affiliation with Italian fascism and Nazism should be added. But Jaffrelot never talks about that affiliation in his works, so what "position" is being spoken of here? Or do you mean to say Jaffrelot's position on Hindutva borrowing ideas from interwar European fascism should be added? But Jaffrelot doesn't detail that borrowing of ideas in his works, so again, what position of his should be added here? To me, this really just appears to be edit warring for the sake of edit warring, while refusing to elaborate what it is you are even disputing in the first place. So please elaborate here. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:21, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

For context, when referring to his works, I am talking about The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics and Modi's India. If you are referring to his position on Hindutva borrowing ideas from, and being affiliated with, interwar European fascism, in some other work of his, please link it here. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:23, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I am opposing your WP:POV pushing, as I have been for more than a year! You do not yet understand the basics of WP:NPOV, which means which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. The fact that I have to explain this to you again after the thousands of edits you have done calls into question your competence.

Jaffrelot denies any affiliation. You will find it mentioned numerous times on this talk page itself! -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:37, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

WP:FOC WP:NPA. Jaffrelot denies any affiliation Could you quote him denying the fact that the Hindutva movement was affiliated with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the interwar period and WW2? I have his works and neither of them state any such denial by him. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:46, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Again, for clarification, when I refer to his works, I am referring to his two main books on the subject, those being The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Modi's India. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:51, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

On some occasions, such as the festival of Dasahara, they marched in step through the streets holding their lathis to demonstrate the strength of the movement. These elements suggest that the RSS should be regarded as 'an Indian version of fascism'. As far as the formative years of the RSS are concerned,[168] this expression is especially relevant if it implies that, while the RSS belongs, with European fascism, to a general category of anti-liberal movements, it also represents a specifically Indian phenomenon which is not simply a reproduction of European fascism.[170] The RSS had already assumed its final form by the time of the first contacts between the Hindu nationalists and the European fascists, and neither Hedgewar nor Golwalkar developed a theory of the state and the race, a crucial element in fascism and Nazism.

This was quoted by me in the transcluded portions below more than two years ago. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:27, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

The quote deals with the RSS and not the Hindutva movement. The quote also neither denies the fact that the Hindutva movement was inspired by and borrowed ideas and concepts from European fascism, nor does it deny the fact that the Hindutva movement was affiliated with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the interwar period and WW2. All Jaffrelot states is that the RSS as an organisation is fascist, but that it is distinct from European fascism due to differing roles of the state and the race. Whether the RSS as an organisation is fascist in the Indian kind or the European kind is irrelevant when the statement in question doesn't even mention the organisation and when the source doesn't deal with anything given in the statement. Please see WP:SYNTH. — EarthDude (Talk) 15:17, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

So what Hindutva movement exists outside the RSS?

And why do you expect that he would "deny" that it was "affiliated" to the European fascism, which is just something you cooked up for POV pushing, with your school boy English?

He says clear that it was an Indian phenomenon, not just a reproduction of European fascism, which is precisely the POV you are trying to push, some "affiliation" as you claim. It is not European fascism at all for Jaffrelot. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:45, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar existed outside the RSS. The Hindu Mahasabha exists outside the RSS. Jaffrelot states that the RSS is an Indian variant of fascism, and while still fascistic, distinct from European fascism. However, that is completely unrelated here since we are discussing content which doesn't mention the RSS and doesn't call Hindutva fascist in wikivoice. What you have tagged in the article as disputed and what you are actually disputing are completely different things. Again, see WP:SYNTH. — EarthDude (Talk) 18:33, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

And which has ever said that they were *affiliated*? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 07:39, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

The quote by Leidig given above, among many reliable sources. — EarthDude (Talk) 07:47, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't see any use of "affiliated" in the quote. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 08:15, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

The term "affiliated" seems to me to be a pretty accurate summary of what the quote says but if you want to stick to the quote verbatim, I am fine with changing it to "engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship with". — EarthDude (Talk) 15:25, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Your understanding of the word "affiliated" is plain wrong. You better consult a good dictionary. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 17:53, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

@Kautilya3, EarthDude: Do try to keep things civil. And also don't edit war. Arctic Circle System (talk) 04:41, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Given this discussion has gone on for a long time throughout various related articles, maybe taking this to WP:DRN would be a good next step? Arctic Circle System (talk) 04:55, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Dispute resolution can't provide a binding consensus for what the content should be. That's usually done through an RfC. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:42, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Oh, right. Arctic Circle System (talk) 23:23, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

As is evident from the above ongoing discussion, I agree with @Kautilya3, that we need to tag the neutrality of this article, until we have some reasonable consensus.

As there are several ongoing points of contention on TALK page about the neutrality of this article, per WP:NPOV, the tag is appropriate as of now: The neutrality of this article is disputed. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 21:14, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

The lead seems to be cherry picked to include the negative aspects, while ignoring the factual and neutral aspects. For example, the article has an important neutral section on "Unified Hindu identity and cultural nationalism", but it finds no mention in the lead. This shows the lead is not neutral, needs to be updated as a neutral summary of the article per WP:Lead and WP:NPOV. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 08:14, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@RogerYg: This is true, yes, but there is also the matter of what extent it is considered a (neo-)fascist movement, to what extent it is a far-right movement, and how to approach this in the lead and in the article's categorization as well as that of related articles. Given that particular argument has been going on for at least a year if I've read around the talk pages correctly, I'm thinking an RfC would be warranted, though it would probably involve quite a few WikiProjects given the intersection of subject matter. Arctic Circle System (talk) 05:42, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Source for the quotation "One of the most important components..."

Shahinshah121 has applied a "failed verification" tag to the following quotation:

One of the most important components of such injunctions of the past that we have blindly carried on and which deserves to be thrown in the dustbins of history is the rigid caste system.

— Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (Seven Shackles of the Hindu Society, 1931)

References

I have checked the cited article in ThePrint, and it does not support the quotation. It is a two-part article, but the first part does not support it either. @RogerYg: You added this at 22:02, 29 July 2026 (UTC); what is the real source for it? Did you get it from Seven Shackles of the Hindu Society by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1931)? If yes, please can we have the page number. And what was the citation to the article in ThePrint meant to support? -- Toddy1 (talk) 06:42, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Well, its in one of the Vikram Sampat's books. I thought its also in the print.in article. I can't confirm the page number as of now, so I will remove this quote.

Instead, I will replace it with something for which I have a reliable reference with page number, and also quoted in Indian Express, a reliable source per WP:RS

"To achieve social revolution we first have to strike at the birth-based caste system and bridge the differences between the various castes." - Savarkar (Samagra Savarkar Vangmay; Part 3, page 641)

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/vinayak-damodar-savarkar-the-reformer-5753369/

Thanks for noting this issue. RogerYg (talk) 07:57, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

restored block quote, as it is well sourced and relevant to the explaination in the section. Length of the quote is subjective and cannot be the main reason for deletion, without discussion.

per WP:QUOTE, rather its the relevance and explaination that comes with a direct quote.

Quotations—often informally called quotes—provide information directly; quoting a brief excerpt from an original source can sometimes explain things better and less controversially than trying to explain them in one's own words. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 20:20, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi Toddy1 (talk), An editor is repeatedly removing the Block Quote from Savarkar on caste, that I added after discussing with you. Editor also deleted the Indian express reference. Please restore the block quote and reference, as it is well cited from reliable source, Indian Express per WP:RS. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 20:38, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Toddy1 and RogerYg: I've reinserted the Seven Shackles quote with a citation to Sengupta (2023). UnpetitproleX (talk) 07:38, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand from the citation that the quote is mentioned in the Introduction page x.

Sengupta, Hindol (2023), Soul and Sword: The Endless Battle over Political Hinduism, London: Rowman & Littlefield, Introduction, p. x . RogerYg (talk) 07:45, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Deletion of mention of practical efforts by Savarkar on behalf of the lower castes

@Shahinshah121: I do not understand why you have deleted: Savarkar noted that education can play a key role against caste discrimination and made efforts for children of the so-called lower castes to attend school, giving monetary incentives to their parents, and providing school supplies to the children.. Your edit summary gives no clue to this. I have verified that the cited source supported the text. -- Toddy1 (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes User:Shahinshah121 deleted it without giving any reason. I have restored it. Thanks again for noting this. RogerYg (talk) 20:11, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

RogerYg is making bad edits here. He added a citation needed tag that was not appropriate, where there was a citation. his edits on Savarkar and caste seem WP:ADVOCACY. RogerYg should gain consensus here before reverting to any of his edits or I will report for edit warring. Shahinshah121 (talk) 20:20, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Hi Shahinshah121, you are violating WP:AGF as assuming good faith is key to civil discussion. Also, I clearly mentioned the reason for the citation needed tag, was that a quote needs a page number. Restoring content deleted withut any good reason does not require consensus. Instead, you need to discuss per WP:TALK before deleting well cited content from reliable sources. You cannot delete any content you don't like with vague reason as "tightening" the content. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 20:25, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I was shortening. I see two problems. 1 - the material is getting to specific here. maybe move to Savarkar page? 2 - there is heavy reliance on a single news article, giving more space to that than to Savarkar's major biographer. This should be flipped WP:DUE. Shahinshah121 (talk) 20:17, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Savarkar is highlighted as the founder of Hindutva in this article, with his main image, so his views are crucial to the article. I agree that reliance on any single source can be an issue and can be fixed. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 20:28, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Per WP:ONUS, the burden of gaining consensus for the content falls on the editor who wants to add that content. It is completely fine in this case to remove that statement until consensus is achieved here for us to keep it. — EarthDude (Talk) 17:50, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

okay. I reverted to 5 August version. any further changes should be discussed here to gain consensus first. Shahinshah121 (talk) 19:56, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

WP:ONUS should not be misused to delete Reliable WP:RS sourced content, as WP:ONUS is related with WP:BURDEN and applicable to disputed content or content not having reliable citation, such as Responsibility for providing citations under "WP:PROVEIT" or WP:UNSOURCED". Also, there have been no arguments to prove that the content is disputed, and hence requires a consensus.

This content as it is from a reliable source, The Indian Express

See WP:INDIANEXP, The Indian Express is considered generally reliable under the news organizations guideline.

So, we should not misuse WP:ONUS for deletions of reliably sourced content that has not been actively disputed with any strong arguments. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 21:17, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

@Toddy1 Please restore the content that we had confirmed is relevant and from a reliable source, Indian Express, per WP:RS, and has been deleted without any strong arguments, and likely misuse of WP:ONUS. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 21:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

like other news sources, Indian Express may usually "be reliable for statements of fact." But "Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics." It is not WP:RS for history one hundred years ago. Shahinshah121 (talk) 22:36, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

This is factual reports of statements or activities of Savarkar, also referenced in other books and letters, not an academic concept or opinion, so reliable News sources are appropriate.

The earlier block quote actually had the page number of the book mentioned in the Indian Express article, but you still deleted it. { Savarkar (Samagra Savarkar Vangmay; Part 3, page 641)} - Indian Express.

Only Reliable News Sources from entire World are includes in this Wikipedia:Reliable_sources Perennial_sources List

, which includes New York Times, Washington Post, Indian Express, etc. .Thanks RogerYg (talk) 07:39, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, RogerYg, that is misapplication of the policy. The Indian Express is a reliable source for news. This is not news, but an opinion column. As per WP:NEWSORG, it is only good for making attributed statements and, if the author is not notable, even an attributed statement would be WP:UNDUE. The ONUS is indeed on you to argue for its inclusion. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:06, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

While I disagree with your points, as Opinions from NY Times and Washigton Post are widely accepted on Wiki articles, however, I can provide scholarly sources for this particular issue, if you insist. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 03:35, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

I reverted to 5 August version again. I warned user@UnpetitproleX about editing warring here and on Savarkar page.

User@UnpetitproleX added a reference to Hindol Sengupta. I removed it and it should not be reinstated. His 2023 book is not WP:RS. Academic reviews said that it "seems to whitewash political Hinduism to a certain degree and must be examined critically" and said "there are certain conceptual problems that I felt were not adequately addressed, and second, errors of fact or argument that I fear will not escape the informed reader." This is dubious for WP:NPOV and "errors of fact" make it something we should not use.

I will post this message on Savarkar talk page. Shahinshah121 (talk) 13:51, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Your argument that using Hindol Sengupta's 2023 book is dubious for WP:NPOV is contradicted by Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Bias in sources. It helps to read policies before citing them.-- Toddy1 (talk) 14:09, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

"biased sources are not inherently disallowed based on bias alone, although other aspects of the source may make it invalid." and "This does not mean any biased source must be used; it may well serve an article better to exclude the material altogether."

as I said, the "errors of fact" is the biggest issue. WP:ONUS is on editors wanting to add it to show it improves the article. Shahinshah121 (talk) 14:29, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Hindol Sengupta is a trained historian and his book was published by Rowman & Littlefield, which is an academic publisher of repute. The book ticks all the checkboxes of WP:HISTRS as well as WP:RS (which is policy). All reviews of academic monographs and academic books are supposed to be critical—that does not make academic works unreliable. I did consult Amiya Sen's review before adding Sengupta, which is how I know you have cherrypicked from it. Amiya concludes: "Sengupta’s work I consider important for three reasons. … it is a timely and useful corrective to Left-Liberal over-determinism of Indian history and culture. … it offers a just and effective counter-narrative to the colonialist reading of our past and by some residual practitioners, with their ill-informed characterizations of India and Indians. … This deeply fissured society now needs the hermeneutics of healing and mutual confidence building among various communities. This is a message that I believe Sengupta delivers eloquently." You have specifically cherrypicked where she is listing the book's shortcomings. Please do not take us for fools. UnpetitproleX (talk) 16:00, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Sengupta has a PhD in international relations and is an IR professor. That is not history.

cherry-picking is an accusation of bad-faith. user should WP:AGF. I emphasized the most relevant part for us on "errors of fact" in Sengupta's book. that is a serious thing. I think we can't refer to Sengupta for facts and should use better sources. ONUS is on @UnpetitproleX to explain how it improves the article to add points relying on a source credibly seen as unreliable on facts. Shahinshah121 (talk) 16:10, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

His JGU biography which you yourself link above says that he was trained in international relations and history as a Chevening Scholar at Worcester College, Oxford. A critical review which lists an academic work's positive contributions alongside its shortcomings does not mean we trash the source completely, nor does it make the source unreliable.

The "errors of fact" that Sen mentions are as follows:

On page 260, note 6, it is wrongly stated that the Brāhmo Samāj intended to take Hinduism back to the Vedas; on the contrary, in modern India it was perhaps the only religious body to renounce faith in the Vedas. In the same note, Rammohun’s year of death needs to be corrected to read 1833. Saguṇa and nirguṇa represent not Divinity with or without form (296n64), but the presence and absence, respectively, of cognizable human qualities in the Divine. There is something seriously wrong in the enumeration of Notes with respect to Chapter Three.

None of these are relevant to the content Sengupta was cited for in this article. Remember, we can all read, so there is no use in trying to misrepresent Sen or any other source. UnpetitproleX (talk) 16:57, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I think @UnpetitproleX needs to calm down. his frustration and refusal to WP:AGF is not helping this discussion.

I am not sure what the point of listing the factual errors is? are you saying that Sen says these are the only errors? I thought she said they were examples of a bigger problem

I would prefer an independent source on Sengupta's degree. faculty usually write their own biographies. if it is accurate, does a one-year masters in "international relations and history" make him a historian?

lots of scholars have written on Savarkar and caste. maybe take some time to read some of them and come back with the proposal that is well-sourced to gain consensus? Shahinshah121 (talk) 17:08, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

You can sealion all you want, but trust me, it won't go very far. UnpetitproleX (talk) 17:59, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I think we should all assume good faith per WP:AGF. Shahinshah121 needs to calm down and accept edits by other Wiki editors. He is assuming all other editors are editing in bad faith. Please remember no one editor owns this article per WP:OWN

While I assume good faith, some of the recent edits by Shahinshah121 exhibit behavior as if he owns this article, and his permission is needed for any edits on this article, which in my view is a violation of WP:OWN, WP:RS and WP:AGF.

I agree with UnpetitproleX on this issue, and he is correct in adding relevant content using scholarly reference of Sengupta, asa the book has been published by a reputed publisher. Some bad book reviews can be found for almost any book, and do not change WP:RS.

I fully agree with Toddy1 (talk) that arguing against using Hindol Sengupta's 2023 book as is dubious using some bad book review, for WP:NPOV is contradicted by Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Bias in sources. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 03:50, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

References

OR section on caste

I found the entire section on caste to be WP:OR. Whatever Savarkar said does not automatically become "Hindutva". Same with any other leader. Unless you have sources saying that "Hindutva" has certain positions on caste, you cannot include it here. (I did some paring, but there is still a lot of off-topic content in there.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

In my humble view, you may be confusing between WP:ATTRIBUTE and WP:OR here.

WP:OR clearly says On Wikipedia, original research means material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable source has ever been published.

All the content in the section is based on WP:RS sources. Editor should not misuse WP:OR to delete reliably sourced WP:RS content.

Per WP:ATTRIBUTE, we can attribute opinions to Savarkar, rather than presenting them as Hindutva, but deleting is not okay per WP:DUE and WP:NPOV, as we have to include significant founder's position on any issue. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 04:04, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Also, Savarkar often noted that in his caste views within the broader views on Hindutva, Savarkar's 1935 essay "Hindutvache Panchapran” (The Spirit of Hindutva) says that the caste system's connection to “discrimination and special privileges” should be abolished. The text states that removing birth-based discrimination and special privileges was necessary for Hindu society, and for the spirit of Hindutva.

Jatyuchchedak Nibandha, Essays on the Abolition of Caste, Samagra Savarkar Vangmaya, pages: 440–499. Thanks. RogerYg (talk) 05:04, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Reverted to 5 august version

issue fixed

@Shahinshah121: You keep posting edit summaries that say that you have reverted to 5 August version. This is getting confusing (at least for me). What are you trying to achieve?

• This edit at 19:55, 6 August 2026 (UTC) reverted the 1st paragraph of the section called "Opposition to caste discrimination".
• This edit at 13:39, 7 August 2026 (UTC) deleted the section on "Opposition to caste discrimination" and its subsection on "Upper casteism". It put a paragraph into the "Unified Hindu identity and cultural nationalism" section.

So the two edits that had more-or-less identical edit summaries did markedly different things.-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:08, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

as per @earthdude and @Kautilya3 in above discussion, there have been several dubious changes that should be undone. I had to revert manually because of the high number of bad edits.

if I made a mistake in deleting a subsection, I am sorry and please fix it. Shahinshah121 (talk) 17:13, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Shahinshah121, please help us to fix this by telling us:

• Which paragraph or sections are you trying to revert?
• Which 5 August version are you trying to revert the section(s) to? It does not appear to be the 20:15, 5 August 2026 (UTC) version.

-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:18, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I think I used 14:40 5 August 2026. but probably 20:25 5 August 2026 is better Shahinshah121 (talk) 17:27, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I hope this was what you intended to do. If I have missed something, please tell explain here.-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:35, 7 August 2026 (UTC)