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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. No, I meant I don't know which phrase, and the best way to banish I don't know from your life is by cramming your brain full of stuff you should know. Join your host, Josh and Chuck on the Super Popular podcast packed with fascinating discussions on science, history, pop culture and more episodes that ask, was the lost city of Atlantis Real? I don't know. Is birth order important? I don't know. How does pizza work? Well, I do know. Bit about that. See? You can know even more, because stuff you should know has over 1500 immensely interesting episodes for your brain to feast on. So what do you say? I don't want to miss the stuff you should know. Podcast you're learning already. Listen to stuff you should know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode we're speaking. With Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees, it wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. What's in quarantine? My GOP legislators. Hello dear friends. I made the previous joke about Ted Cruz quarantining and then being exposed again and immediately re self quarantining back in an earlier distant age when such things were a little bit more funny seeming. We are not in a position where that's super funny right now, so I would like to replace the bit that Sophia and I did about that with this new bit, which is a joke. So there's this pirate, and he walks into a bar and the pirates. The bartender looks at the pirate and he's got like a steering wheel in his pants and the bartender's like, hey, what do you what you got that steering wheel in your pants for? And the pirate responds Yar to his driving me nuts. That is the joke. Please enjoy the rest of this episode. I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the ******** podcast about terrible people. Here with me, Sophia Alexandra. Yeah. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Robert and Sophie. Thank you. I I did a musical intro for you, just doing mouth sounds. I noticed it and it was good. And you didn't like malfunction like a broken robot like you did last time when you tried to intro. So this is really a step up. I've decided to turn a new leaf professionally because I think it's important to be professional. So in the spirit of professionalism, do you want to play with the switchblade a stranger sent me in the mail. Have you try I I got a switchblade, so every time I come back to LA I get new fan packages and this one was just a switchblade. So that's pretty fun. We've been carrying it around, playing with it. Didn't know how to close it for a while, so it was just waving it around. So if he is trying to figure out how to close it now, it's a good time. Yeah, I'm excited to figure this puzzle out. Yeah. Chris Goddard, like 30 seconds. Chris. Immediately, Chris, our editor, immediately figured out how to close it. The rest of us were in, particularly me, shamefully couldn't figure it out. So I was just, I was just waving it open knife around for a while. And there's like a pinching situation. I'm just like, where we're good with OSHA, right, Sophie? Hmm. OK. Sophie says everything I do is fine. So. Sophia? Hmm? Have you heard about Narendra Modi? No. Oh boy. Well, he's the Prime Minister of India. And you heard about how like, couple, couple, three weeks ago there was that program and a New Delhi where, like, mobs of angry Hindu extremists were chasing Muslims through the street and killed dozens of them. I'm not as familiar as I should be. Oh, boy. Yeah, that happened. And we're going to talk about everything that led up to that happening. So this is going to be a fun one. Fascism. You know how sometimes countries are like functioning democracies for a long time, and then a fascist gets in charge and you realize that, like, oh, man, everybody was still way more racist than I gave him credit for. **** you know, that happens in some countries. No. What do you mean? Like how and where? Where? I don't can't relate to that at all. Yesterday we're talking about something that has only happened in India and nowhere else. Currently not ongoing. Yes. Anywhere near or around us. I I love talking about things that every single person listening to this podcast hasn't experienced in their own country. That's my favorite thing to talk about on this podcast, man. Good times. So yeah. How are you? Hey, I'm just a quick question. How many dead babies in this episode? I just need to know how how much to steel myself for this. There's like one paragraph. We talk about a couple, but other than that, it's mostly the section of murdered adults. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty light. OK, do you like me more or less, now that you're only having me, now that you're not having me on only dead children episodes? You know what it is, Sophia? I feel like I feel like, you know, when you, when you when you get into a new relationship with somebody like you, stay with what's comfortable for a while. And so we stayed on the dead baby train for a little while because it made you feel safe. Could made me feel safe. But now I'm willing to experiment with fascist foreign political leaders. Oh, you want to invite a fascist into our relationship? Yes. Yes, I do. There's always a point in every relationship where you invite a fascist. Strong man in you. Freaky. Let's do this. That's why they keep winning, actually. Because you just wanna ******* bring him in. Yeah. You can't keep him out of your bedroom. You just like to, Dom, and I appreciate that about you. Oh boy. This is gonna feel so much less comfortable after we get to all the murdered people. I mean, that's why I'm really getting it in right now. So I'm gonna start by talking a little bit about naziism in India. As you know, big fan, big fan of Nazism in India, used anywhere, really as a Jew. Nothing warms my heart. So naziism in India have a long, strange history that's really, really difficult to talk about. As we discussed in our Savitri Devi episodes, the OG Nazis were obsessed with India as the homeland of the ancient Aryans that they idolized. And the S on an airbag, which was like the S Archaeological division, actually sent expeditions into Tibet and northern India to seek out the origins of their mythical Superman. So, like, how heartwarming that they had enough time to, like, follow this beautiful, they really thread, they really wild. They were like. Murdering all across Europe is just so sweet that they were like, you know what? Let's explore a little bit of some something mystical. Yeah, this was when they were sitting this out was like kind of the slow murder. Where they were like they hadn't because they weren't that many like Jewish people actually in Germany proper. So they they really hadn't ramped up the killing yet and they were mostly doing weird **** and murdering their political opponents and then pre crystal knocked. But it's it's pre. Invasion of Poland and stuff. So it's like, it's like pre the start of actual hostilities. So they've, they they're definitely killing a lot of people, but like, by Nazi standards, they haven't really got into what's more like an amuse bouche. Yeah, yeah, let's have a little bit of archaeology with our, our murder appetizers. Just like us, like a slow ramp up. Yeah, yeah, like, like I'm not going to make an edging comment here. So while the ideological underpinnings of Nazism did not get really any purchase. In the Indian subcontinent during the 1930s and 1940s, many Indians saw Nazi Germany as a potential ally in their battle against British imperialism. So one of the tough things to understand, and this is also true in a different kind of extent with like Ukraine, is there was a number of folks in India who supported the Nazis during the period. With the Nazis were in charge not because they cared about Naziism, but because they hated the British Empire, which is like, yeah, OK. Everybody hates the British Empire. Yeah. And if you're like a Hindu nationalist or an Indian nationalist and like a reasonable person like 1930, you know, you could look at the Nazis and be like, well, I'm sure they've done bad stuff, but like, let's look at what the British Empire has been doing, right. Like, I think that's a long history of being terrible. A lot more reason to be concerned. So that's part of the support here. And and that aspect of it, the the part where it's like kind of understandable support of the Nazis, reached its height with the Indish Legion or the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Vaughan s s. This was an all Indian military force aimed formed at the guidance of Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose. The forces were initially formed out of Indian POW's captured fighting against the forces of the British Empire. So, like, they would beat a British Army and they would capture a bunch of Indian. Soldiers that the British had taken in. And then they would be like, you guys want to, like, invade India and free it from British domination. And these guys were like, yeah, of course. That sounds good. You guys want to build a snowman? Yeah, that was a little bit like that. So the idea was that, like, these Indian soldiers would act as pathfinders and, like, help lead the German army into India when it was time to invade the subcontinent. And Germany wound up collecting well over 10,000 Indian soldiers that way. So there were like 10,000 Indian Hindu and Muslim Indian. Soldiers in the US, that's why, yeah, most people don't know this story. It's so wild. It's really weird. They were eventually stationed in France just in time for the Normandy landings, and they never wound up taking part in much meaningful combat. But a lot of them did get killed by the the French resistance. Like, it's this really weird story. So not there are not confused. You'd be like an s s officer came to take you away and he was Indian and you'd be like, well, they didn't do that. Really? Like, they weren't doing normal S stuff. We've even had in their car, you had to take people away. No, they're not really persecuted. Even be in the s s, I don't think they knew what it was. I think they were like, man, you guys hate the English and we hate us some English again, like, that's a horrible mistake. Yeah, yeah, it's an it's a real comedy of errors. You could get a yeah. And it's it's weird because, like, there's like photos of Erwin Rommel, like, reviewing parades of these guys and you can see, like, ******* rahmel, like, like pinning medals on the chest of guys with turbans. And like, it's just this, it's it's a very strange chapter of history. But they did have, like, a clause in their contract that said they would not be used for offensive operations anywhere but India. So, like, they did kind of have written into their contract. We're not, like, fully on board with the Nazi thing, so. I wouldn't call. I don't know, like, it's weird. It's kind of cool to other have other people have who have joined like armed. Things gotten a chance to be like, you know what? This. But not this. I don't like all the way up to the killing. But not the killing. You don't get to do that, right? Yeah. This is the only time I've heard about something like this happening. Yeah, it seems unusual. It's a weird case from the war. And imagine if that's what soldiering really was. You sign up, but you get to say no things. That's actually, that's actually how the German army works today. Really? As far as I know. The only one where if you are a German soldier, you have a right written into, like, the law. The nation that says that if you have a moral issue with a deployment or something, you get to say no. I wonder why that's there. Yeah, I wonder why they have that rule. So after the war, India gained her independence on the back of a fundamentally peaceful movement. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the chief architects of independence, was assassinated, though, by a member of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist political party with ties to Savitri Devi, the birth mother of Esoteric Hitlerism, who we talked about a few weeks ago. India and Pakistan split apart, due in large part to fears by Indian Muslims that they would be dominated by Hindus in any democratic system. This mass migration resulted in what some have termed. Mutual genocide killing, well over 1,000,000 people possibly like as much as 3 million people. Holy ****. It was a horrific. Horrific, like the split of India and Pakistan was just unbelievably violent. And it's one of those things where like, you'd be really hard pressed to like, lock down like a side that was like mutual. I've never heard again the term mutual. Mutual genocide is an insane name and also the name of my death metal band. Yeah, it is a good name for a metal band. Yeah. And it's this is all a very complicated history, but there, so you can see there's like. This huge tension between so India is simultaneously has more Muslims than any other country on Earth, but is also up. The vast majority of people in it are Hindu and this has been a problem for a while in terms of like. Violent? Differences between the two groups, in part because, like, at different points, one group or another has like ruled the nation and the other people particularly like, for a long time the the like there was like a Muslim conquest of India and the Mughals ruled and it was like, so this is like, there's a lot of history here that we're not going to get to cover in enough depth, but the fact that, like the partitioning of India and Pakistan goes as violently as it does. Says something about the state of affairs at the time. And it's it's worth noting that like, a lot of that also goes on the British, because there were ways to have handled this that were smarter and and more understanding and and would have resulted in less death. But England was just like, **** it, we'll just hear we drew a map like this seems good to us. You guys figure out how to implement it? Redrew the map where we can't change it just because people are dying. Yeah, the map is already drawn. Yeah, and it's probably worth noting that it's unlikely any of this would be happening if the British hadn't ruled India for a couple of 100 years. But. Anderson gets angry when I I talk **** about the British Empire. She's a big fan of this, dressed in a really smart, like British Tweed right now. She likes Royals and she does not **** around when she's dressed to the nines. Is Royals the show about the British royal family? Can I give her a treat? Is that the one everyone's watching anyway? So in the decades since the partitioning of India, the Nation of India lurched forward to take its place as the planet's largest democracy. Elections and crises came and went, and India took its place again as an independent power on the world stage. Americans grew increasingly obsessed with the subcontinent as a source of ancient wisdom and as a great vacation destination. And at the same time, Indians grew. Well, something nothing has changed. Look at any white girls Instagram. It's pretty cool. One of the neat things about going to India, particularly to New Delhi, is how many like young American, like 19 and 20 year olds you meet there having like massive existential crises. Because New Delhi is a hard ******* city to land in like it is. It is a shock. There's so many more people than you'd expect. It moves so fast, it is so polluted and so like, like like people just have massive panic attacks and there's like this whole industry based on like you see some rich panicking. Kid who, like, didn't realize what it was really going to be like to be in a city like that and you like, come up to him and be like, you want to get out of of of Delhi, right? You want to visit like one of these vacation spots. And he's like, yeah. And they're like, all of the trains are shut down. There's no buses leaving the town. But I got a bus that you can charter and then, like, they've paid $3000 to rent a bus for a week. Oh my God, what a sweet ******* hustle. It's it's pretty fun to watch. I'm learning so much. Yeah. So at the same time as all of this happened, Indian, or a number of people in India, grew increasingly obsessed with the theories and iconography of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement. And the reason behind this was complex and confusing. It ranges widely from more or less harmless stuff. Like the term Hitler has become a common Bollywood insult for characters who act badly, like, you know, you know, yeah. Yeah. Like, like, like, just sort of like being a total Hitler right now. Yeah. That's so awesome. We should do this. You should do that one more. But it it it kind of hints at something which is that like Hitler and the legacy of the Nazis isn't really seen kind of the same way over there as it is here because it's way more distant, right, like all of that. Those politics are more distant to people there. So it kind of like, you get some weird examples of like every couple of years there'll be a story of just like some shop opening up in Delhi or some other city in India that's like a huge swastika on the front or like a picture of Hitler. And it's like. Usually when you read articles interviewing the shop owner, he's like, well, I didn't really know anything about him. I just thought like the imagery was cool. It's like, it's very strange. So uh crossword and Indian bookseller, sold 25,000 copies of Mein Kampf in three years. Jaco, another Indian book merchant, sold 100,000 copies in seven years. Hitler's manifesto was translated into Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Malayalam, Malayalam. Jesus, I'm so sorry to all of the people of Southeast Asia that I'm going to be butchering words from Bengali and Tamil. And it's sold solidly across the subcontinent, so you have totally hear about. Vinci Code man. Down in the Knights Templar, we don't want that going over there. Yeah. So you have this weird thing where, like there's this mix of the history of Nazism being less immediate in India and so, like people, you know, like adopt the term Hitler as a general insult and but also this weird phenomenon of like Hitler's actual words selling very well in chunks of India. And what makes this unsettling is that the book is not being sold there as a historic text. Instead, Mein Kampf has achieved popularity in India as a sort of self help book, a guide to success for Hindu businessman. It's not great. What the ****? Yeah, a guide to success. Yeah. He's like, they're Tim Ferris, you know, not their Tim Fair, but like a a subculture within like the the the Hindu business community. He's like a Tim Ferris type figure, like a great product productivity guru, like set a timer for 30 minutes and then when it goes off, you kill all the Jews. I found a CBS News article that interviewed Tarun sinkhole, a management student at New Delhi's Institute of Technology. Was like without the final solution, I would have never passed my marketing classes. We need a final solution to getting these products off the shelves. I'll tell you what. He read my so this guy taroon read mine comp as an undergraduate, and he found it inspiring, and he told CBS Quote It serves as a reminder that nothing is unachievable. He said it doesn't matter how many millions of people you dream of killing, from, how many different kinds of groups you got this you you want to kill three? You want to kill six, you want to kill 11. You got this after that point, girl, you're Russian. Because. This does come back to my frequent refrain on this show that, like people should not as often as they are being encouraged to follow their dreams. Some people's dreams are garbage. Yeah, some people's dreams not good. So, uh, yeah, he said. It serves as a reminder that nothing is unachievable. And he added that he added that he was able to separate that message of of empowerment from the book's pervasive anti-Semitic ideology. So you got to cut out all the Jew hatred. But then there's some good stuff. The old I read Playboy for the articles defense? Yeah, I read Hitler for the management advice. Exactly. Yeah. What are you talking about? Mine comp. Yeah. I mean, sure, there's some good stuff in there, but mostly what I thought about was efficiency. Yeah. Mostly it taught me how to really set up an organization. Yeah, it it taught me management skills, how to talk to people before you kill them, obviously. But, you know, it was very helpful and very helpful, you know, and luring people to their deaths, it really helped. It's wild because, like, if you actually look into how the Third Reich was managed, it was a complete **** show and Hitler was terrible at it. And the only reason they had. As much military success as they did as decades of primarily Prussian military ingenuity that like, but it it like he wasn't good as a manager is the is the core of the point, but I guess people miss that. So in 2010, Bollywood director Nolan Singh announced his plan to produce a movie titled Dear Friend Hitler, which was, shall we say, a different take on all eight off. I mean, I guess I don't need to register my script with the WGA anymore because that's really, someone's taken my idea. That's a bummer. Hitler: not so bad. I I do. That was also another version of, I mean this. That was a musical. But I have an idea for a script that is. Yeah, do you want me to just throw it out here? Nobody steal this. It's called reverse Hitler, the Hitler with the heart of gold. And it's about a clone of Hitler that's his opposite, whose goal is to. And it can either be. I actually think this might work best as like a Netflix miniseries. His goal is to get 6 million Jewish couples pregnant. My God. Hmm. How about anti Hitler? Anti Hitler. We can workshop the title. Yeah, and you know what else? We can work on board with this project. Let's make this happen. I don't want this to slip away, OK? No, we can make some bank off of this dude. Anti Hitler hunters is popular and that's it is trash. It is. It's so bad. It's really terrible. So bad. It's like, what? Horrible? It's like written by people who I think, like, had heard of Jewish people but aren't. And I know the guy involved is Jewish and the guy starring in it is Jewish, but I don't understand. Why are they calling the grandparents softer? That's a that's a Hebrew word. That would never be the thing. It would be Yiddish. It just doesn't make any sense. It's like just have one ******* real Jew look it over. Just one. Just one. It was. It's so bad. I respect it. You know what? I'm horrible. What about the ******* accent on the grandma? Sorry. No, no, it's good. It's good. This is a terrible show. But you know what's not terrible? And also hunts Nazis. These goods and services. Exactly. Exactly every single one of them. Nailed it. I loved that. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant. Families start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. 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Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people and so alleviating poverty? Is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, we're back, and we're talking about Naziism in India. So in 2010, this Bollywood director Nolan Singh announces that he's going to make dear friend Hitler, and CBS News reports that he was, quote, genuinely shocked that this created controversy genuinely shocked. The media expressed disdain, Jewish groups were horrified and his lead actor threw it, though a bit baffled by the reaction quit, while such a response would seem, if anything understated in much of the world. Singh had reason to believe his film would not generate even a ripple of scandal in India. Here, Hitler is not viewed as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of morally ambiguous fascination. He is seen as a management guru akin to Machiavelli or son Sue by business students and an object of wonder by people craving order amidst the chaos of India. Imagine a $0.50 did his own version of my income instead of. 3rd of war? Yeah, that would be a bummer. I feel like Kanye maybe? Kanye. New Kanye. So that last line there about people craving order amid the chaos of India? That brings us to like the real problem. Because while many of the Indians who created weird like Hitler themed restaurants and clothing stores did so because they thought the imagery was neat and they just didn't know that much about the Second World War, there were a number of people who knew precisely what Hitler stood for. And some of them took deliberately took advantage of their countrymen's ignorance of the Third Reich to whitewash Hitler and mainstream fascist politics. I'm sorry, whitewash Hitler. Yeah? Pretty funny. Is that even possible? Kinda. I found a really interesting article inherits a left-leaning Israeli news website and it documents this. It was called a Hitler's Hindus, Nazi living nationalists on the rise. And it starts with the author's recollection of their time in a cycling expedition through India. In July 2008 they found themselves in Nagpur, a city in the exact middle of India and one of the hotbeds of the Hindu nationalist movement. In Nagpur they found a pool parlor named Hitler's den, complete with his death of a definite least Nazi swastika on the sign. I mean, obviously, what are you going to take pictures in front of? Yeah, I mean Hitler's dead, of course, I we all need a Hitler's dead shot. So Hitler's den was not just the result of good-natured ignorance about European history. For you see, Nagpur happens to hold the headquarters of an organization called the Rush Tria Swam Boy, Swayamsevak Song, or RSS. It's a far right Hindu fascist political organization originally founded back in the 1920s. And this is the group that, like, the guy who shot Gandhi was a former member of the RSS. So **** cool dudes. One of the cofounders, or ideological founders or whatever of the RSS is a fellow named VD Savarkar. And VD Savarkar had a brother who was a big fan of the Nazi priestess Savitri Devi and like wrote a forward in one of her books and VD Savarkar himself was a big fan of our old buddy Adolph. In 1940 he addressed a group of Hindu nationalists by saying there is no reason to suppose that Hitler must be a human monster because he passes off as a Nazi Nazi is improved. Undeniably, the Savior of India just passes off as that. Passes off? Yeah. As a Hindu extremist, VD Savarkar's primary motivation was a desire to see India turned into a Hindu stand. That's the term you'd hear at the time, a nation completely dominated by Hinduism and Muslims in particular, completely purged and excised from society at that same gathering, he stated. If we Hindus and India grow stronger in time, these Muslim friends of the league type will have to play the part of the German Jews instead. You, yeah. Yeah. Not a nice guy. And V's saver car coined the term Hindutva for his new ideology. He argued that ancient Arians who'd settled in India formed a Hindu nation. Hinduness stemmed from geographical unity, racial unity and a common culture which pitted the Hindus of India against all others. And there was like a cast angle to it too. He was like a Brahman and I think in his view of it, and it's become sort of more egalitarian fascism in the modern era. But like, initially, there was like a very strict like racial hierarchy within Hinduism too. I think that's less of a factor now, but I'm not an expert on it. Another early RSS leader, Ms Golwalkar was nicknamed the Guru of Hate. He was another big Hitler fan. In his 1939 book We, Our Nationhood, defined a seminal Rs text. He wrote this something amazing about being the guru of hate. It's like, it's like Eddie Pepitone's, the Bitter Buddha, you know? I mean, not suggesting he's a Nazi. He's a very funny non Nazi comedian. Yeah, not a Nazi. Just repeating, probably not a Nazi, probably. So he said this in his book German Race Pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the race in its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races the Jews. A good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by. So it's so cool that when my grandpas, I mean my grandma's family was all shot to death. It was like a really good lesson for it was a really good lesson for. And it it goes to show kind of this thing that I don't think has talked about enough, which is like fascism, functions very similarly to a cancer and World War Two can be seen as a really aggressive dose of chemo. But we didn't ******* get it all. And that's why this is all happening all over the world right now, is these little bitty like pockets of it. It's not possible to get it all. I maybe it is. Maybe. I think there's an argument to be made about the nature of our society and that and this will come into play later here. And that if you live in a system that is as completely dominated by by capitalism and and monied interests as ours is, because that's always a factor in the rise of all these movements is is the business leaders in those countries, even the ones that don't really like the fascist party, prefer it to socialism. And that's a huge factor everywhere fascism seriously takes hold. It's just like these rich people being like. Well, I guess I prefer these folks to giving up a big chunk of my fortune. And so there's an argument to be made that if you have a a state with a strong social safety net already in place and with strict limits on how much power the wealthy can exercise, it's seriously cramps the ability of these movements to get off the ground. Nobody's ever eradicated fascism from the human race, so we can't know what the solution is. But yeah, if I'm if I'm theorizing, that would be a suggestion I would make. I'll take it under advisement. Yeah. The next time you're trying to eliminate fascism, maybe give that a shot. Sophia. Not all the way in, but I'll think about it. Well, it's all on you specifically, so I hope you do. But yeah, as you know, people have been waiting for me to eliminate family. Solve this. Yeah. We're all waiting. So another one of the founders of the RSS was a guy named Hedgewar, and he deliberately patterned the RSS after the fascist parties he'd watched rise to power in Germany and Italy. Hedgewar dressed his stormtroopers and khaki uniforms patterned off Mussolini's fascists. He marched them through the street and an Indian equivalent to the goose step, and he gave them like a weird little salute. That's like kind of like a modified Hitler salute that they still do to this day. Modified in which way? If you look up R extra kick to it? Or is it no, it's like a little bit less of the hand motion. Just like less noticeable. What do you want me to look at? Rs salute. You get some, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like your arm kind of like over your with like your fist over your heart. You can sort of see the inspiration, but it kind of looks if you do this, it's like a it's an almost Hitler. Yeah. It's a little bit of a of a subdued. Do you have to keep your arms straight, though? Yeah, I think you have to keep it straight. You know, that has a very Hitler look. It's it's got a Hillary look to it. Yeah. And hedgewars fundamental belief was that centuries of domination by the British Empire had emasculated the Indian man, and they needed a violent fascist paramilitary force to restore their manly pride. So I noticed you picked up the knife just sort of. Yeah, by reflex they got real mad. That's a good reflex to fascism. So the RSS was from the beginning, profoundly anti Muslim. They preached that India's Muslims were descended from Hindus who had been violently converted and thus were not authentically Indian. Nonviolence and plurality were all equally hateful to the men of the RSS, including one Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. After Gandhi's murder, the party was banned, but not for long. The centrist powers of India never quite succeeded in wiping it out, and as a result? Hung out in the margins of political society for years, waiting for the right time to reemerge bit by bit, it grew to hold influence over ever greater swaths of Indian society. In 2004, the Gujarat State Board issued textbooks that described Adolf Hitler as a hero, with social study textbook chapter titles like Hitler the supremo, and internal achievements of Nazism. One second. Primo supremo. What a bad breakfast sandwich. Yeah, the supremo. Yeah, that does sound like a terrible. Like a lot of hair in it. Just the mustache. Yeah. It's mostly, like, really greasy pork and, like, boiled eggs. Yeah. Greasy pork and boiled eggs is the supremo Hitler. Yeah. Yeah, the mustaches. And for sure, the bread. Lettuce. Yeah. Well. It's like, oh, I mean, I'd prefer it to subway, but not by much. And it's less fascist than subway, but not by much. Subway. If you sponsor our show, I'll take all this back and we will eat fresh. Seriously. So, yeah, from that social study textbook, there's a section called ideology of Nazism. And in that chapter, it notes, quote, Hitler lit dignity and prestige to the German government. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people and advocated the supremacy of the German race. So you can kind of see something happening here. Yeah. Sympathizers in the state of Tamil Nadu succeeded in sliding Pro Nazi messages into a 10th grade. Social studies textbook in 2011, including chapters praising Hitler's inspiring leadership achievements and how the Nazis only ordered the persecution of the Jews in order to maintain a German race with Nordic elements. Nordic element so that's good. In 2012, tenth grade students at a private school in Mumbai were asked to complete a sentence starting with the words I admire. Nine of the 25 students in that class picked Hitler. A 2002 poll conducted by the Times of India found that 17% of respondents listed Hitler as. The kind of leader India ought to have so given all that, it would be fair to say that India's issues with Nazism go just to scosche behind simple ignorance of history. It would, in fact be fair to say that a number of very motivated people have spent decades attempting to mainstream Nazi ideology and push the ideals of fascism on the people of the world's largest democracy. And it would furthermore be fair to say that those same very motivated people have seen terrifying success. No individual has seen more success with this than Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India and the man who was governor of Gujarat in 2004 when the province added that Pro Hitler curriculum to its textbooks. So we're going to talk about Modi now. Now we're into the party and stroking my knife. Good. That's the right response. Ohkay, let me call it my knife. What's up now? My knife. I'm kindly stroking my knife is the coolest thing I've heard all day. Yeah, let's let's get a couple of knives. More knives in here, Sophie. Narendra Modi was born in vinegar, a small town in north Gujarat, Misana District, on September 17th, 1950. He was the 6th of the third of six children and he was not born into wealth or privilege. His family was of the ganchi cast, which put them about as low on the cultural totem pole as one could go without literally being an outcast. Traditionally, members of this cast pressed vegetable oil for a living, but Narendra's father supported his family by running a small Chai shop at a local railway station. The Modi family were incredibly poor and lived together in a 40. By 12 foot single story House, when Narendra was old enough, he worked at his father's tea shop to help support the family. He would get up early to work alongside his dad and then cross the train tracks to head to school later in the morning. The modern political propaganda around Modi often emphasizes the fact that he is unmarried and chased, essentially portraying him as something of a monk dedicated purely to his work on behalf of India. A man who sacrificed even love for the love of his country. As we know being chased doesn't always work out. Nope, actually, it could be a real problem. Maybe some people should just. **** yeah, but people should just ****. Maybe, yeah, but this whole like presenting himself as like a chaste monk, it does, kind of. It keeps with a broad trend in propaganda around Modi. For example, this is how his website narendramodi.in describes his childhood. As a child, Narendra Modi balanced his studies non academic life and his contribution to the family tea stall, his schoolmates recalling Hendra. As a diligent student with a penchant for debating and reading, he would spend hours and hours reading in the school library. Among the sports, he was very fond of swimming Narendra Modi. A wide range of friends from all the communities. As a child, he often celebrated both Hindu and Muslim festivals, considering the large number of Muslim friends he had in the neighborhood. Yet his thoughts and his dreams went way beyond a conventional life that began in the classroom and ended in the environs of an office. He wanted to go out there and make a difference to society to wipe tears and suffering among people at a young age, he developed an inclination towards pronunciation and asceticism. He gave up eating salt, chillies, oil and jaggery. So that's kind of how he's portrayed in his official propaganda, right? So they also. You know, he had tons of Hindu for or Muslim friends. He's not racist and he's so, dude, if your God doesn't want you to eat chillies, abandon your God. It's not that because, like, obviously chilies are like a traditional Hindu food. It's this idea that like. That they are better than people because you don't need chilies. That because you sacrifice comforts of the flesh. You're a holy man. Like that's kind of what make. And that's not just Hinduism, that's like a huge in Christianity and Islam like this idea that you're saying like. You're not *******. At least have chilies. If you're not ******* at least have chili. You don't have hot sauce. What are you even have? That's a T-shirt. You're not *******. You have some chilies. Yeah, you gotta. Hmm. Anyway. Chili's or *******? Ideally both to avoid fascism. Yeah. So it was, however, revealed during his first campaign for Prime Minister that Narendra was legally married and had been virtually his entire life. He was, like married as a child. The couple actually moved in together at the age of 17, but they only cohabited. For three months the Narendra abandoned his wife to wander around the Himalayan mountains on a pilgrimage and he never returned. Ah second. So if this till death do us part, just kidding, no, until I wander away forever. It's it's a little bit weirder than that because I I can't put this on Narendra because he didn't get to like choose to marry his wife. It was like his family. His family was very traditional and they thought that like they should do kind of the traditional thing for people in their culture, which was like, you marry off the kid. Pretty young. Like, it was an arranged marriage sort of thing. And so, like, this partner was picked for him when he was three or four and they were just like engaged to be married. And then at 17, they moved in together and he kind of immediately knew, like, I don't want this life. And so he left and I can't really put, I mean, I could put the whole becoming like a fascist on him, but deciding that you don't want to marry this person your parents hooked you up with when you were like 4 that that that can't be on him. How did his wife feel though? I don't know. ******* wander away. Yeah, but that's. I mean. I can't blame him for, like, not wanting to be married when he didn't choose to get married. I'm sure she didn't want it either, but she was just trying to play along for a second. Yeah. I don't know what happened to her. I don't know that anybody does. OK, good. We should research that. Yeah, that would be next time to know. Yeah. So anyway, what I'm getting at is that, like, this guy's back story is a little bit complicated, and we don't have, like, a really clear idea of how he spent his youth or his childhood. We have a lot of propaganda and a few bits of, like, hard facts that are sprinkled in here and there. Umm. Yeah. So it's it's weird or not weird. It's just it's not what we're used to. And it's hard to like, like, a lot of this is hard to kind of square with the way things are in the US, like, here in the US, like, politicians are supposed to be like family men and like, to the point where, like, our current president literally bragged about *** **** **** during a major political debate. And it's kind of hard as an American to get your head around somebody bragging that, like, I don't **** I have no partner. And like, I don't bone at all. But no, I get that it makes you holier than. Other people exactly. Yeah. Any and and and it kind of positions himself or guru need to come. Yeah. I don't. I don't for me coming as politics and that's a good thing. It's just different. So Narendra's childhood coincided with an interesting time in Indian politics. The Congress party, the party of Gandhi, basically held power for the 1st 50 years of his life. They stood for a second for secular democratic values and were directly opposed to the RSS. As you might expect from a violent fascist movement, the RXS was initial RSS was initially a high cast endeavor organized by wealthy men. But in order to expand their membership base after the partition of India, the RSS quickly found itself recruiting new members of lower castes and one of those. Fritz was a young boy named Narendra Modi and it's hard to say when he first got involved with the RSS. I've heard some sources that claim he was eight or nine years old when they when they went with him. His. That's early. As though that's real ******* early, yeah. His official biographies don't agree with this, and they state that he was like, after he went on pilgrimage to the Himalayas, that he he came back and he joined the RSS. We don't know. The official biographies talk about, I don't know, stuff like when when he was nine years old, there was flooding in a river and he built a food stall to donate the proceeds to relief work. And that during a war with Pakistan and his youth, he engaged in acts of charity, serving tea to soldiers passing through the railway station. That's what they focus on, the official biography that he's like this very patriotic. Kid who dedicates a lot of his time and effort to to helping his fellow Hindus. And it's entirely possible that if he did any of this stuff, it was actually at the behest of the RSS and he was doing it as like a child activist. I really don't know. It's kind of impossible to tell. Whatever the precise truth, we know that at age 17, Narendra abandoned his wife and left on a pilgrimage of spiritual enlightenment. When he came back, he set up a tea cart at a bus stand to make ends meet and began working for the RSS in a in an official capacity as a pracharak, which was essentially a street. Propagandist city. Holler at his wife when he got back. I don't think so. I I don't think they saw each other again. Like a rude dude. Yeah. Come by and say like, hey, it's going to be weird. I'm selling tea in town. I'm back. You know? I'm sorry. I'm kind of * **** but probably you don't want to be with me anyway, so this is for the best. But I'm working for the Nazis. Yeah, you see me in town slinging T to the Nazis. Don't, don't feel weird about it. Don't make it weird. I have to say, I've never ****** so. This is critical for me. We never ****** so they may not have he. He might be completely honest about the whole chasteness thing, like, well, it's kind of hard to tell because it's hard to get like a real hint of what the man is, but he might actually be like. A no nut sort of dude. Like, like really committed to that proud boy don't come. Sorta sort of thing. Fascists hate coming. I know, it's so weird. So yeah he he starts work as a pracharak, which is basically like a street propagandist. Like he's giving speeches and stuff to try to like rile people up and get them involved in this nationalist movement and really teaches them how to like stir up a crowd and work one. And pracharaks like Modi were expected to remain chaste, living like monks and dedicating their every waking hour to the party. So when Modi was not delivering speeches and spreading the RSS Gospel of intolerance against non Hindus. He cleaned out the living quarters of senior RSS officials and interviews. Today. Modi claims that finding the RSS basically saved his life. Quote I got the inspiration to live for the nation from the RSS. I learned to live for others and not for myself. I owe it all to the RSS. So fascist parties like the RSS de facto idolize the military, and leaders in such organizations either have to have a military background of their own or like, as we saw with people like Hitler and Mussolini, or they need to come up with a very good excuse as to why they did not serve. That still reinforces their bona fides as like a a lover of the military. I was busy. Not *******. I was busy. Too busy. Not jerking off to the military. You gotta **** in the military. We kind of see this with Trump's bone spurs and in his bizarre insistence that the time he spent in the military school was essentially the same as being in the military. Like, you've got to find a way to, like, kind of connect yourself to the military if you're going to be this sort of authoritarian strongman. And Modi never served, but his biography really tries to thread that needle, and I'm going to quote from it right now. As a child, Narendra Modi had one dream to serve in the Indian Army. For many youngsters of his time, the army was seen as the ultimate means of serving Mother India. As luck would have it, his family was dead opposed to the. Idea Narendra Modi was very keen to study in Sainik School located in nearby Jamnagar. But when the time came to pay the fees, there was no money at home. Surely Narendra was disappointed. But fate had different plans for this young boy, who was disappointed on not being able to wear the uniform of a jawana soldier. Over the years, he embarked on a unique path that took him across India and pursuit of the larger mission to serve humanity. So he wanted to be a soldier, but like they couldn't make the funding work out and stuff. And thankfully, he found another way to serve. That's just like. Being a soldier but doesn't risk him getting shot in a border war with Pakistan. So that's cool. So just like that though, just like that, it's the same. It's the same, only he doesn't die anonymously in a trench being ordered to charge a machine gun. That's all that is very, but it is the same. It is the same. Exactly the same, but very fortunate for him. So in 1975, when Modi was 25 years Old, India went through a period of economic collapse in the attendance civil unrest that comes with it. The RSS saw this as an opportunity to recruit and to stir up dissent against the ruling Congress party. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded to all this by suspending Parliament and instituting emergency rule, a widely unpopular and illegal move that was rightly condemned by many. During her time as de facto dictator, Indira Gandhi had RSS leaders arrested and persecuted, and the organization itself was banned. Modi went into hiding. This time, dressing as a Sikh in a turban and what appears to be a fake beard. I've got a picture of him in disguise and I'm almost certain that that's a costume piece he's wearing. Let me see the beard. Look at that. It's the little line on there that makes it look like it's a fake being so weird. Or he's just like. Got like a thick version of a chin strap going? Yeah. I can't really say for certain if it is a fake beard or not, but it's the only question that concern. It's a wild choice either way, right? It look, I think the mustache is real. See the the mustache is real. You can almost see the tape. Yeah, it's weird. It's a weird look. Sunglasses help. Yeah, they do help. I mean, it's not a bad. You just couldn't grow a beard or he has one now. I think so. Like, what the **** dude? I mean, he was younger then some men. It takes a while before it comes, right? Yeah, I'll accept that. So Indira Gandhi's. Period of emergency rule eventually ended and the RSS was unbanned and rather than being harmed by their period of persecution, Gandhi's targeting of the group legitimized them in the eyes of many Indians who had not identified with the organization previously. The RSS began to grow and the loyal Narendra Modi moved up the ranks quickly. In 1987, he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, and the BJP is the electorally political member of the BJP. What's up, dude? Still feel like BJ's? Sorry, yeah, but it's the in this case, the BJP is the electorally political wing of the RSS. You don't gotta tell me about the BJP, Robert. Roberts uncomfortable. It's great. You can all join blushed at the BJP. That is so cute. Ohh Lord in heaven ohmer, you're adorable. You know what else is adorable? And pro *******. That's that's exactly right. All of these companies will blow you in the capitalistic sense by sending you products in exchange for currency. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. 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Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. If we don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save chimps, forests or anything else. And that becomes very clear when you look at poverty around the world. If you're living in poverty, you can't afford to ask as we can. Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people and so alleviating poverty? Is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So Modi has just joined the the BJP, which is the political wing of the RSS, and he started at the bottom of the party. But his skill as an organizer ensured that he rose rapidly. By the 1980s, he had become a senior figure in the BJP's Gujarati chapter. At the time, the BJP was still definitely fringe. It had only two seats in Parliament. The party leadership looked out at the political situation in India and saw that they needed A cause to crystallize the divisions between Hindu and Muslim in the country. And they found this cause in the city of Ayodhya. That Holy City had a mosque called the Babri Masjid. Masjid sorry, the Babri Masjid, which had been built by the Muslim Mughal Emperor Babur in 1528. For a variety of confusing reasons, a number of local Hindus had grown convinced over the years that this mosque was built. Over the site of an old Hindu temple and some of these people began to claim that Ram, an avatar of Vishnu, had been born on the spot. And I'm going to quote now from a New Yorker article laying out what happened next. In September 1990, a senior BJP member named LK Advani began calling for the Babri Masjid to be destroyed and for a Hindu temple to take its place. To build support for the idea, he undertook A2 month pilgrimage called the Ram Rath Yatra, across the Indian heartland, traveling aboard a Nissan Jeep, refitted to look like a chariot, he sometimes gave several speeches a day and flaming crowds about what he saw as the government's favoritism towards Muslims. Sectarian riots followed in his wake, leaving hundreds dead. Advani was arrested before he reached Ayodhya, but other BJP members carried on gathering. Reporters and donations along the way. On December 6th, 1992, a crowd led by RSS partisan swarmed the Babri Masjid and using axes and hammers, began tearing the building down. By nightfall it had been completely raised, so they destroyed this mosque and Narendra Modi was still pretty low on the totem pole at this point. But his skill as an organizer earned him a place. Organizing the Rafi yatra that, like Chariot March across the country. It was his job to organize the Gujarat section of the Chariot March and the Ram Yatha sparked a series of horrifically. Bloody Hindu Muslim riots all across the subcontinent the violence took weeks to die down, and it was particularly bad. In Mumbai, one of India's largest cities, Muslims were forced, either by mobs or by basic self preservation, to move out of neighbourhoods their families had occupied for generations. Many moved into what were effectively ghettos. The riots and dislocation caused by the Ram Rath yatras aftershocks contributed to the growing violent polarization of Indian society. One survivor The New Yorker interviewed reported feeling as if Mumbai had been transformed by all this. That is the first time I ever really thought about my identity. Our entire neighborhood, our friends were going to kill us. And all this was ******* bank for the RSS. By 1996, nine years after Modi joined, the BJP had grown to become the single largest party in parliament as it ever does. The rioting and racial hatred sparked by this fascist organization convinced more people to join it. As they grew to consume the Indian political system, a few forward thinking academics began to study the party and its members. One of these was Ashish Nandy, and I'm going to quote again from The New Yorker here. A trained psychologist, he wanted to study the mentality of the rising Hindu nationalists. One of those he met was Narendra Modi, who was then a little known BJP functionary. Nanda interviewed Modi for several hours and came away shaken. His subject, Nandi told me, exhibited all the traits of an authoritarian personality, puritanical rigidity, a constricted emotional life, fear of his own passions, and an enormous ego that protected a knowing and security. During an interview, Modi elaborated a fantastical theory of how India was the target of a global conspiracy in which every Muslim in the country was likely complicit. Modi was a fascist in every sense, Nandy said. I don't mean this as a term of abuse. It's a diagnostic category. Cool and good. Everybody only diagnostics that I'm sorry, this is just, just gonna come back to the BJP. Yeah, really? No way. Sometimes all you can do is laugh about **** **** when you're talking about fascism because they hate ********. Gnostic category. That's what she said. Yeah, that's what, that's what this psychologist. I'm not just being like, you're a fashion, I'm being like, fascism is a mental disorder and I'm diagnosing you with it. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So in September 2001, a month in which nothing else of historical import occurred, Narendra Modi was appointed to be the Chief Minister of the Government of Gujarat, which the RSS and BJP had begun to dominate in a series of elections. Modi's rise to power was not due to his own electoral success, though. It was due to basically his ability to politic internally and he basically undermined another rival of his and the BJP, a guy named Keshubhai Patel. I am so sorry about the names here. But you know me, yes, yes, yes. So yeah. I found a quote from a guy named Vinod Mehta, which who's the former editor of an Indian News magazine called Outlook, who remembers Modi turning up at their office in the year 2000 with a bunch of documents incriminating this rival of his, Patel in a scandal quote. I immediately felt this man was bad news. There was something sinister about him and the way he spoke, and I felt deeply uncomfortable in his presence. He complained about Patel and talked about corruption. He came back a couple of times, but I didn't run the story before I knew what had happened. Is back in Gujarat as the chief minister and Keshubhai's place. So Narendra like basically ***** with this other guy who sees his arrival, succeeds and kind of maneuvering him out of power. And he winds up as the man in charge on of Gujarat on February 27th, 2002 when a passenger train stops in the city of Go drop after departing from Ayodhya. Many of the people on board the train were Hindu pilgrims who had been visiting the destroyed Babri Masjid mosque in order to advocate the building of a Hindu temple over its remains. Most of them were members of the RSS. Somehow, Muslim residents of Gojra realize that this train was filled with Rs activists and they began to shout and jeer at them and the Hindu partisans inside began to shout back. The train stalled as it began to depart, and this provided time for the confrontation to escalate. No one knows exactly what happened next, but someone threw something on fire into one of the cars, possibly like a Muslim shop owner, like tossed a stove in there. It's really not known for certain, but one of the people in the crowd outside toss something on fire into the into the train and I. I've been on a lot of Indian trains. They they're incredibly crowded and a lot of people wearing, like, long, flowing cotton garments and also carrying like piles of, like, clothes and stuff with them, like what they own and whatnot. And it's incredibly flammable in there. And this catches, like, members of the group Inside Catch and the fire spreads and it's just this, this horrific fire. And really, like, before anyone knows what's happening, 58 people had either burned to death or suffocated on board the train. Holy ****. Yeah, and blame quickly settles. The Muslims in general for this horrible tragedy. So members of the VHP, the religious wing of the RSS, the group that most of the people in the train had been a part of a petition, Narendra Modi, for the right to parade the burnt corpses of their members through the streets of Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat. Yeah. They're like, we wanna, we want to really, like, make the most of this tragedy. So we want to, like, carry the dead bodies of our Members who got burnt to death and marched them through the city to try to, like, spark a ******* riot. Like, that's the goal here. Excuse me? I got to say that, you know, I was like, oh, I'm with them. I'm with them. They're grieving. Wait, what? Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like that really went to 100 real quick. Yeah. And the Home secretary of Gujarat warns Modi that allowing them to do this will spark. Another violent riot telling him things will go out of hand. But out of hand is exactly where Modi wanted things to go. And sure enough, he allows them to March the corpses of their dead members through the street. And this provokes mobs of furious Hindus to take to the streets all throughout the cities of Gujarat, shouting, take revenge and slaughter the Muslims, rioters cut open the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women and murdered babies. Hundreds of women were gang raped. Yeah, this is where we get this where you *******? This is that paragraph, right? Yeah. OK. touché, you *** ** * *****. There's mass gang rapes. At least one Muslim boy is forced to drink kerosene and swallow a lit match. It's it's bad. It's a bad set of riots. Can you swallow a match? I'm. No, I'm not. I know that's not the part I should focus on. It's not. I don't think well. Geez, yeah. And also a member of the Congress party, Assange, Jeffrey, was caught by a crowd and publicly dismembered. So, like, these are really bad, right? By the time it's all over, somewhere around 2 to 3000 people are dead, and the vast majority of them are Muslims. And it will. We'll never get an exact death toll. Reports began to filter out in the immediate wake that this violence had not been purely spontaneous, just an uncontrollable expression of rage. And I'm going to quote from The New Yorker again. They appeared to have been largely planned and directed by the RSS. Teams of men armed with clubs, guns and swords fanned out across the state's Muslim enclaves, often carrying voter rolls and other official documents that led them to Muslim homes and shops. So they get like government information on where Muslims are living in town to carry out this stuff. Sounds very crystal naughty for sure. Modi, the man in charge of the Gujarati government, was nowhere to be found, but his influence was felt everywhere as he ordered Indian Army soldiers to post up in their barracks rather than intervene to stop the violence. Police also received orders to stand down, and in many areas they just took part in the killing. One of the very few officers who did not go along with this was Rahul Sharma, the top cop in the heavily Muslim district of Bhavnagar. He later testified that he received no word at all from his superiors on how to contain the riots with which lasted more than three months. Sharma took matters into his mind. The riots lasted for more than three months. Three months of of constant St violence. Holy **** yeah, it's ********. It's a bad time. Umm in Sharma is one of, like, the few heroes of this time. So he, like, is being told nothing at all from his superiors about, like, what to do about these murder mobs. And it kind of comes to a head when there's huge, organized crowd of RSS supporters with weapons start, like, posting up outside a school filled with 400 Muslim children. And he eventually ordered his cops to, like, fire into the crowd, which is really maybe the only time I can think of where I'm like, yeah, it's good that the police shot at that crowd. Holy ****. But he successfully saves all these kids. He's a good guy. He did the right thing. Most police did not. The vast majority of Gujarati police let the pogroms continue unabated. As a general rule, this two conforms to the standard behavior of law enforcement during acts of ethnic cleansing all around the world. The ones who do not actively participate very often sit back and watch. So we can assume anywhere there is ethnic cleansing occurring, the police will be a part of it actively rather than protecting the victims. That's just true on multiple content aligning. What's the opposite of a silver lining? Like a **** streak? Yeah, it's like a **** streak. Yeah, alright, yeah, yeah, like a **** St covering one of those like thin blue lines. Yeah. So Sharma was shuffled out of his job and criticized by India's home minister and BJP functionary named Advani for allowing too many Hindus to die in his district. So like one of the few cops who, like, does what you would hope a police officer do and protects the public gets like basically fired for the fact that too many Hindus died because like some of his cops had to like, shoot at Hindus to like, stop them from massacring holy schoolchildren. So in the end, 2000 people or more were killed in three months of horrific violence. More than 150,000 people, mostly Muslims, were forced out of their homes. As with the earlier rioting in September 1990, the Gujarati riots left a vastly more polarized state in their wake. Muslims were forced out of neighborhoods they long inhabited and dumped into slums for their own safety. One of these formed in the vast garbage dump of the city of Ahmedabad. Citizens Village, as it came to be known, hosted 10s of thousands of Muslim refugees. What little aid it received was supplied by volunteers Narendra Modi's government. Refused to help. When he was actually asked why he had abandoned these people who were also citizens of Gujarat, Modi replied. Relief camps are actually child making factories. Those who keep on multiplying the population should be taught a lesson. Wow, he's a cool guy. Cool. Not coming, dude. The Gujarat riots were met with a tepid response by the Indian government. Only a few dozen rioters were ever convicted of anything, and only one elected official in the BJP may have been Kodnani was ever convicted of murder and conspiracy. She was cleared of all charges when Modi became the Prime Minister. So that's nice. Pretty convenient. Pretty convenient. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, though. The international community was outraged by what happened in Gujarat, and the RSS, and Narendra Modi in particular, became global pariahs, Modi was banned from travel to the United States or the United Kingdom. His reputation. Suffered enough that his fellow BJP members in India temporarily disavowed him. In 2004, the BJP Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee was voted out of office and he blamed Narendra Modi for his loss. So for a while it seemed like the Gujarat riots, as horrible as they were, had sounded a death knell to Modi's career and to the RSS. But of course, those riots would prove to be only the beginning. And on Thursday's episode, we're going to talk about what came next. But, you know, it's time to talk about now. Sing goods and services? No. The amazing plugs that you have to plug. What? Yeah, we're in the pizzone me and the other members of the BJP. Hmm. Can be found on Twitter and Instagram at the Sophia SOFIYA. And you can hear me on my 2 podcasts. One is on iheart with miles Gray from daily zeitgeist called 420 day fiance, and the other one is private parts. Down with Courtney Kosak, where we travel all around the world and talk to people about love and sex and sexuality. Yeah, love, Courtney. Courtney Love, Courtney hate. The growing specter of international fascism. Listen to Sophia's podcast on her website. Yeah, as a quote from you, it is. It is. That's my only book jacket quote. So listen to those podcasts. Maybe pick up a couple of knives, couple of other weapons. Just, you know, get ready for your own local. Ethnic cleansing mobs boy howdy Sophie. How do we end an episode? You can find Robert on Twitter and I write OK. You can find us on the twin Instagram at ******** pod. You can find our sources on underneath the episode notes if you just Scroll down. And you can listen to Robert on worst year ever and we have another project coming out very soon. Look for that. Yeah, the women's war. March 25th, episode One, March 25th, trailer March 18th, look out for it. So boy, Sophie, the way you handled that was so much more responsible than just telling the audience to arm themselves to fight against mobs of violent. That's what I'm here for. Thank you. Alright, the episode is now over. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting creation distribution. And monetization of your podcast go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. If you could completely remove one phrase from your vocabulary, which phrase would you choose? I don't know. Correct answer. 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