Abstract

India's Brown-Shirt Brigades

The article focuses on the current Indian politics, as foreign observers are concerned about the emergence of number of fanatical communal groups in the wake of the recent Hindu-Moslem clashes. Some of them openly call for the elimination of the Indian prime minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and other tolerant, modern-minded members of the government, the conversion of India into a 100 per cent Hindu state, and a declaration of war upon Pakistan. Pandit Nehru has described them as the "Brown-Shirt Brigades," and indeed they bear a strong resemblance to the Hitler storm troops. The best-known of these groups is the Hindu Mahasabha, or Hindu Conference, Which has a member in the present government. But perhaps the most dangerous is the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh, or National Service Organization, a body somewhat like the Hitler Youth but as secret and ritualistic as the Ku Klux Klan; the real name of its leader is not generally known.