Indian Political Thought and Germany's Fascism, ca. 1918-1950

This doctoral thesis investigates the history of modern Indian political thought in part through its significance for German fascism. It differs from other works on ‘global fascism’ in that it decentres ‘fascism’ as a concept but traces themes that emerge in its global context: the idea of ‘the people’, race, caste, and sovereign spaces. The point of departure is India’s emergence into a new geopolitical imaginary in interwar Germany, which drew the German geopolitician Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) to the Indian sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887-1949). Sarkar welcomed the three totalitarianisms for countering internationalism, socialism, and pacifism that eradicated the very foundation of national sovereignty in antagonism or ‘dualism’. He developed a potentially limitless notion of ‘the popular’ or ‘the people’, which exceeded liberal democracy and centred on the Nazi Volk state. Next, I uncover how the ‘father’ of Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), conceptualised a Hindu ‘race’ as grounded in impurity, miscegenation, and women. Savarkar problematised the Hindus’ historical loss of the power of caste to transform outsiders into blood-relations. Reactivating exogamy, he called for Hindu males to imprint their race on Muslim women by conversion-cum-marriage and rape. India’s political language of ‘caste’ became formative for National Socialism itself, as well-known figures like Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), Richard Walther Darré (1895-1953), and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) showcase. Kaste structured the contradictory aims of National Socialism: while nationalism required the purging of ‘caste’, racism required the resurrection of an aristocratic and imperial ‘caste’ of Aryan warriors. The last chapter returns to Indian spatial conceptions. It particularly sheds light on Hindutva’s re-constitution after the creation of geopolitical dualism with the Partition in 1947. Deendayal Upadhyaya’s (1916-1968) ‘Integral Humanism’ made post-independent Hindutva for the first time synonymous with neo-Vedantic (non-dualistic) Hinduism, which he weaponised to assimilate the dualism of Pakistan. This thesis contributes to modern Indian and German history, the historiographies of race, space, and internationalism, and seeks to further theoretical discussions in global history, global intellectual history, and political thought.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Sabastian, Swapna Luna Katharina

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kapila, Shruti

• Vinayak Damodar Savarkar
• Benoy Kumar Sarkar
• Hindutva
• Global Fascism
• Global Political Thought
• Karl Haushofer
• caste
• Weimar Geopolitics
• Deendayal Upadhyaya
• "race"
• National Socialism
• Indian Political Thought

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/e1a5d3e5-70b1-4110-aedb-f797520677bb/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.52383

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/305298