The blood-dimmed tide of fascism is loosed in Modi’s India

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http://atimes.com/2015/10/the-blood-dimmed-tide-of-fascism-is-loosed-in-modis-india/



Sudheendra Kulkarni , the face of India that evokes a thousand disturbing thoughts

The blood-dimmed tide of fascism is loosed in Modi’s India
By M.K. Bhadrakumar on October 13, 2015

Seldom does adrenaline flow so instinctively the moment one begins reading the morning newspapers in the Indian capital, but today is one such day. I am not entitled to claim friendship with Sudheendra Kulkarni but do have an acquaintance going back by several years. I hold him in high esteem as an intellectual and humanist.

I am unable to read the newspapers anymore today. Can’t simply get past the blackened picture of Kulkarni, smeared with oil paint. I feel numbed with pain as the thought begins stealthily entering the consciousness: This is the face of India that I saw in today’s Indian Express

Yes, this is how India looks after 18 months of relentless RSS rule under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch as gatekeeper. The episode on Monday on a Mumbai street reminds one of the street battles and violence that the Nazis deployed to supplement their electoral battles in the mid-1920s, which they fought with political acuity, deceptiveness and cunning to convert their party’s non-majority but plural status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933. All the while, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding their rise to power.

One can well imagine the complex thoughts that would have raced through German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s erudite mind as she shook hands with Modi last week in New Delhi. If Merkel had been given a public platform in Delhi (which Japan’s Shinzo Abe foolishly did during her visit to Tokyo last year where she spoke of the lessons of history and the virtues of honest repentance), Merkel would have done some plain speaking, which she is famous for, distilled out of what the great German nation went through under Nazi rule.