3,951 words
New Delhi
25 July 1973
Dearest comrade,
I do thank you for the $25 that I cashed yesterday! It was a Godsend as I had not money left at all. As I told you, I am not paid during the holidays, i.e., from 15 May to August. And even so, as they again this year gave me only three hours a week lessons at the Alliance Française, the pay is (even with no cuttings for occasional one day holidays such as 15 August) hardly enough to pay my room rent. Since early June I have had only one tuition a week—i.e., a little less than $3 a week—and no translations at all to do. So I lived on the little I had managed to save for the printing of my book in French (in Calcutta) and when that was exhausted, sold (at a debased price) one of my last gold bangles. The man in Chandranagore who was to print my book but did not, and to whom I had given 500 rupees ($24 = 177 rupees now) in advance, never gave back that money, in spite of three registered letters. Fortunately my present printer only wants a new account (I gave him 2,000 rupees in December last) when half the book is printed. That will take a little time. Now about one fourth is printed. Everything here is slow, extremely slow—unless one has a lot of money to make work smooth.
The dearest things here are stamps, household utensils (and always of bad quality. Again, for the fifth or sixth time, I have to give my electric heater for repair. The wire just snapped suddenly), and washing powder, etc. In the British days every practical matter was by far better. One could get duty-free imported things (excellent tinned foodstuffs, and items above mentioned) cheap. Now only Indian made things are within my means. Imported ones have heavy duties and are only for rich people. And Indian made things (copied from the West) are just no good. (Traditional Indian handicrafts—silks, embroidered stuffs, Jaipur enamel work, sandalwood objects, etc.—are lovely. India should have stuck to the old specialities and not try to produce what her people just can’t produce properly.) I am also ????? against all these efforts to industrialize India and am absolutely against all this “aid” not only to India but to all technically “under developed” countries. It only helps the swarming of the lower castes, here, i.e., of the already teeming millions of non-Aryan masses, and the submerging, under numbers, of the real bearers of what is culturally valuable in India: the high caste Hindus, fair-complexioned (mostly; and especially in North India) and with the same features as any of us: Indo-European features. These (even if they were all faithful to their race—which they are not: Communist propaganda works among the young generations even of Aryan Indians; well it works in Aryan Europe, too) will be more and more outvoted by the increasing numerous non-Aryan masses that the present government is trying hard to “educate” and place in high positions whenever possible.
But mind you, all this is the fault of the Indians only as much as it is always one’s own fault if one allows oneself to be influenced by “education” and propaganda. It is the British—the democratically minded and unconsciously Jew-ridden British—who started the mischief, and that as early as the nineteenth century. The “Indian National Congress” (in power now) is a British creation of, if I remember well, 1875. And the ominous “Communal Award”—which I fought so vehemently in my public lectures in the British days, is also a British invention—an effort at breaking the aristocratic spirit of Hindu Tradition in favor of “democratic justice.”
I am translating from French a few pages of my book finished in 1971 and now slowly being printed in Calcutta. The extract is out of Chapter 2 whose title is “False Nations and True Racialism.” This is the extract:
The English who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tore away India, bit by bit from the domination of the “Great Mughals” (and of several Indian princes) were, as were the founders of the kingdoms of Bactria and Sangala, twenty-two centuries earlier, Aryans by race, therefore disposed to toleration. Consequently they did not try to alter by force the customs and beliefs of the Hindus or of the Muslims, whenever these did not act as a hindrance to their own exploitation of the country. But they were Christians, or at least had had a Christian education, and had imbibed from Christianity (be it but in theory at least) “love of all men,” and the belief, which stands at the basis of modern Democracies, that “all men” have the same rights and the same duties. In addition to that, they had kept of it (i.e. of Christianity) that typically Jewish intolerance, that the religion itself had taken over from its earliest faithful, brought up in the faith of the “jealous God.” Therefore they encouraged the activities of Christian missionaries in India, and suppressed, in course of time, certain customs that shocked them: in particular, the sacrifice (on principle voluntary) of widows upon the funeral pyre of their husbands, and, especially, they gradually introduced into the country, through the teaching in their schools and universities, and through a series of political reforms, the dogmas of Democracy, and the spirit of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
England’s real crime against India is not to have exploited the soil and the people on an unprecedented scale, but was to have inculcated into the heads of thousands of Hindus of higher castes, anti-racialist democratic principles, anti-Traditionalist principles, along with an ominous humanitarianism when not an out-and-out anthropocentrism; and finally to have introduced into the administration of that vast sub-continent such measures as tended to promote the least valuable racial elements of the population.
One of the most outrageous of these measures, against which took place a long and widespread agitation, but which was finally enforced, in spite of all, already before the 1939–1945 war, is known as the “Communal Award.” It consisted of having the members of the provincial legislative assemblies elected “according to religious communities”—the provincial legislative assemblies being actual native parliaments, composed (theoretically) of “representatives of the people” of regions mostly as broad as France or Great Britain, and containing millions of inhabitants (all voters, naturally. Otherwise, where would Democracy stand?).
It was, for example, compulsory that the number of Muslim delegates should be 55 percent of the total members of the Assembly of Bengal, for Bengal had then 55 percent of Muslims in her total population. It was compulsory that in the Assam Assembly there should be a number of Christian representatives proportionate to the number of Christians—nearly all Aborigines, i.e., tribal men converted by the Missionaries—living in the province. Moreover: it was compulsory that the Untouchables (people of the most inferior races of India, when not outcasts from any race) should be represented in every Assembly proportionately to their numbers in every province. As a consequence, there were in every province constituencies in which the electoral lists of candidates, whatever be the political party belonged to, were composed of nothing but Christians, or nothing but Muslims, or nothing but Untouchables. The voters—that is to say, all the inhabitants of age—had no other choice, whatever was their own caste or creed, but to vote for one of these candidates—or to put a blank paper in the polls.
The whole system was conceived in order to take away from the Hindus, in general, and especially from the high-caste Hindus—i.e., from the Aryan elite of India—every scrap of political power, already within the more and more “Indianized” administration that the British were setting up themselves, before their departure, which they had felt was unavoidable. It was enforced by the authority without appeal of the colonial power. One could not change it. One only could, from an Aryan racialist standpoint, try to limit the mischief that would result out of its applications. And in order to do that, one had to act as though one accepted the absurd principle of the “right” of any majority to power, regardless of its value, simply because it represents the greatest numbers . . . and try to make the Hindus a majority at the expense of other communities.
One therefore had to try to give to the most backward of the most degenerate of Aborigines—to the half-savages of the hills of Assam—a (false) Hindu consciousness. One had to bring them to proclaim themselves “Hindus,” sincerely, by telling them how tolerant Hinduism is, but by forgetting to mention the caste system that it upholds. One had to try to bring (or rather bring back) the Indian Christian or Muslim (both, as a rule, sprung from low-caste Hindus converted to one of the two foreign creeds) to Hinduism. And for that one had to surmount the repugnance of most Hindus to accept them, for never yet had Hinduism taken back into its fold anyone who had left it, or had been expelled from it (and declared Untouchable). One could fall out of one’s caste and land into Untouchable. One could not re-enter it. But one had to change that, if power was not to pass entirely into the hands of the non-Aryan majority of the population of India. For alone could a (false) nationalism—a European style nationalism, necessarily false in the case of any multiracial society—could bring about the change and unite the Hindus (badly, but better badly then not at all) under a no less false parliamentary system imposed up in them against their tradition, and against the Aryan Tradition, of which their elite had remained up till then the sole depositary.
The extract follows a passage about my own work on behalf of the Hindu Mission (whose president, now dead, used to look upon our Führer as “an Incarnation of Vishnu,” i.e., of Divinity as a Sustainer of Traditional order). Unfortunately that body has gone to pieces, after the death of that really able idealist. It is now just interested in “social work,” as everybody is expected to be, here, whether sincerely, or not.
One becomes unpopular (as I am in so many circles) if one openly says the best way to put an end to the demographics menace (today’s “India,” the two Pakistans, and Ceylon: in 1932: 270,000,000 inhabitants. The same surface, now—forty years later—over 1,000 million!!! Where are we going to land?) is not to preach “birth control” (for which nobody cares) but to suppress medical and preventative measures of hygiene. Then natural selection will again work. Out of ten, one—the fittest—will survive, like 200 years ago. And mind you, that I should apply all over the world—but especially in technically underdeveloped countries, which never should be forced to “develop.” (France had four fifths of her territory covered with forest as late as the seventeenth century. Where are the trees now? Lions roamed about South Europe in the days of Emperor Antonius the Pious [second century AD]—“Androcles and the Lion”—Where are they now?) I would give the whole of sub-humanity to save one of these noble beasts—big cats; aristocrats of the jungle, so much more beautiful than any of their hunters.
By the way, I just sent you by air mail, registered, a sample of Long-Whiskers and one of Impeachment of Man (written in 1945–46). The preface gives you exactly my way of feeling. It costs about three $3 postage. I could afford it thanks to you. And you’ll have the books quickly; otherwise they take months. Tell me frankly how you like the story (one side of the story) of those fifteen years of my own life—1942–1957. Miu (the black and white cat) died of old age, loved and cared for by my friend Simone Bacqué, in the center of France, about two years ago. There is “a” Black Velvet—lovely, glossy, with yellow eyes—among the batch I feed in the evenings (now fifteen minutes’ walk from my new room for I had to shift. My old landlord, himself a tenant, had no right to sublet the room to anyone. A neighbor reported him. So I had to go. This room is unfortunately more expensive, and I have to pay for current apart from rent. But it cannot be helped).
Now about my 68th birthday (It sounds so old. And certainly I don’t feel 68. But I am—or shall soon be). I have no access to any record player, stereo or otherwise. Moreover, nothing puts expensive appliances out of order in no time as this tropical climate (rains now, regular monsoon downpours). And as I have no job on which I can rely (they can kick me out any day they please. I am not “sent” from France, but “local staff” paid one twentieth or so of the “detached from France teaching board” even if far more qualified). I never know how long I can stay in a place. All my books are in France in other people’s care. I don’t know when I can have access to them again, and if I shall ever. I am living from hand to mouth with the smallest number of things possible—like a bird on a branch.
The thing I do need the most is to get Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne printed. The best present you can possibly send me is any contribution you can to the printing of that book (an extract of which I am sending you. But it is not all about India, anything but!). I only want lessons and translations and shall try to put by as much as I can of the 4,000 rupees I should give the printer when half the book is printed. But I don’t know whether I shall manage. Any—however small—contribution—in that way would be the most welcome present to me, much as I appreciate any other suggestion of yours.
Did I send you Joy of the Sun—Akhnaton’s life told to young people? I have a few copies left. (Was written in 1942.) Can send you one when I can again afford the air mail postage. The pictures and designs (heads of chapters) in the book are also mine.
I thought Mr. Mukherji had replied to you. Perhaps his letter was lost—as was yours to me, which you speak of, telling me you love animals also. I never got that letter. And it is not the only one I have missed. Things here are stamped with the sign of inefficiency, carelessness, slowness—a result of the systematic employment of “scheduled castes”—i.e., untouchables, or very low Sudras—in all services, “free” India following punctually the spirit I described in the extract I am sending you.
The little boy (Greek born in the USA, who wants to be “an American”) whom I mentioned in Pilgrimage is called Yanaki (Johnny from Iôannis = John is Greek. Yanaki is a diminutive). His mother Dorothea had come with him to France for her brother’s wedding to another Greek of Constantinople (whose three children, now grown up, are “French”—born in France = French since 1790, according to French law. It is the contrary of the spirit of Point 4 of The Twenty-Five Points).
Speaking of our old songs, I must tell you how much I love them—all and especially the Horst Wessel Lied. When in July 1957 I reached the frontier that separates Baluchistan from Persia—shortly after the Persian station of Zahedan (where I had spent a week at a lovely little Greek hotel, for I had reached Zahedan by bus coming from Mashhad on a Tuesday evening, and the only train for India left Zahedan on Tuesday mornings)—I remember the elation that overtook me. Before my eyes as far as could be seen was that desert of gravel—parched lands, as hot as a furnace. There Alexander’s soldiers had marched under their heavy helmets and armor, days and days, dying of thirst. He lost four fifths of his forces in that desert land: Gedronia, in old Greek terminology, blazing desert (I gazed at it through the windows of my third-class carriage seated among heavily veiled Muslim women), but desert meant barrenness, no people; freedom, sweet freedom after twelve years of persecution. Now hated post-war Europe seemed far away!—nonexistent. Nobody cared here whether I was a Nazi or not. (I bet most of those women, sweltering under their heavy “burkas” did not even know what such a thing as a Nazi was!) So I stood, my face to the burning wind and sang the Horst Wessel Song. In the shimmering heat, over the miles of gravel in which twenty-three centuries before, Aryan men of Greece—my compatriots—had died of thirst—in which Alexander had turned over the helmet in which one had brought him a spoonful of water, saying: “While my men cannot drink, nor shall I”—resounded the music that one used to hear in the streets of Greater Germany of the glorious days—in defiance of the “re-educators” nine thousand miles away.
I remember also my elation at the youth camp in the Cotswolds (August 1962)—the attendance of which cost me the right to ever enter England again—when I heard our songs (that I know in German) sung in English translations, in particular the “Germany awake our of your nightmare . . . (Deutschland erwache aus deinen bösen Traum . . . gibt feinden Jüden in deinem Reich nicht Raum),” etc. I sing them here.
In fact my new landlord and landlady, Punjabi Brahmins, are not against us at all. On the contrary! The gentleman is even a sincere admirer of our Führer. Which is not an uncommon thing among high caste Indians, when they have kept themselves immune to democratic propaganda. It is here—in the land of the ancient Aryans stamped forever with their culture—that Adolf Hitler received divine honors already in his lifetime, and not only through me. I have known others—Indians by birth—to burn incense in front of his picture, garlanded with flowers. And when, in 1940, in my husband’s native town (Medinipur, West Bengal) where I was staying with my mother-in-law, I went and offered sacrifice (wheat, rice, sugar, and scarlet jaba flowers) to the Dark Blue Goddess (dark blue, or blue-black; the color of starry night, of the ocean, of outer space) Kali or Shyama—in thanksgiving for Germany’s victories, not only did nobody object, but a throng of nephews and nieces and of comrades of theirs—then of student age—followed me to the ceremony. (I sometimes wonder what the Führer and his close collaborators—Goebbels, Göring—would have felt if they had been able to see the ceremony—the tribute of a batch of the Aryan aristocracy of far-away Bengal, to them!)
You mention the Khyber Pass. I saw it in 1936 and went through it (from Peshawar to Landikotal and back) in one of those strange trains with two engines one at each end, fit to follow the upward winding way through that gorgeous heap of ochre, grey, brown, and reddish-brown rocks that unite India to Afghanistan. It is grand. I described it—and its inhabitants, the Afridis, tall, white, dark-haired, grey or brown eyed men—Aryans—but of Muslim faith (like the Kurds in Northeast Iraq)—in my first book written after my two doctoral theses, L’Etang aux Lotus (The Lotus Pond) and account of my first impressions of India (published in 1940 at Mr. Mukherji’s expense).
Alexander’s Macedonians were the second Aryan wave of armed men to go into India through this Way of Conquerors. The first—several—waves came around 4,000 BC according to B.G. Tilak’s calculations. In 1942, when the disaster of Stalingrad had not yet shattered these hopes, we expected a “third wave”: the German army and tanks, coming to meet their Japanese Allies in imperial Delhi. . . . I can see myself as though it were today, sitting with Mr. Mukherji in our dear old Calcutta flat (that he since then gave up, unfortunately, to live as a homeless wanderer), sipping Turkish coffee (that our old servant Sindhuballa had learnt from me to prepare) and talking of “their” coming—longing for it. I imagined our song:
Wir warden weiter marschieren
Wenn Alles in Scherben fällt
Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland
Und Morgen die ganze Welt . . .
(We shall march still further,
Even if all falls to pieces.
For Germany is ours today,
Tomorrow the whole world! . . .)
I imagined that song resounding through that reddish solitude, under the deep blue sky of all very dry countries . . . and the Swastika flag, fluttering above the “Tiger” tanks—as it then also fluttered about the everlasting snows of Mt. Elbruz, 16,000 feet above sea level, over both Europe and Asia. Why did that glorious dream not become a reality? First because our Leader was not the ruthless last “Man against Time,” but only His forerunner (as he said himself to Hans Grimm in 1928). And also, I believe, because Europe did not deserve him, nor the greatness that his rule would have given her. (Her history shows it; and also her attitude after the war. A mere minority was “ready” to receive him and accept his spirit.)
You ask me about the meaning of “Gottglaubig.” The word means first “believer in God”—i.e., not one who thinks “man” is everything, but one who look up to higher values, cosmic values—to an order that transcends anything merely “human.”
But the “Gottglaubing” had nothing to do with the outwardly neo-pagan revival of such groups as that headed by Erich von Ludendorff and his able wife Mathilda (born von Chemnitz). Our Führer did not want to “go back” to the forms of worship of the past—Wotan cult, etc. He wanted us to adapt the everlasting spirit that once animated those old expressions of piety to the present day—to be what we should have been now, had we never fallen under the moral and spiritual bondage of decadent Rome and of Jerusalem. (Luther shook off the “Roman” Church, but stuck to the Bible all right, including the Old Testament, and all that is Jewish in the New.) In fact, for some reason I never could actually make out, the Ludendorff neo-pagans took up a definitely anti-Hitler attitude after the war—a fact that I always deplored. They were finally “forbidden” under most-Catholic Herr Adenauer but must still be active, in the shade of clandestinity.
“Gottglaubig” was the answer a young man aspiring to become an SS man was expected to write, opposite the question “What’s your religion?” in the form he was to fill out. To answer: “No religion” or “Unbeliever”—i.e., believer in nothing above man—was perhaps even worse than to answer: “Roman Catholic” (i.e., accepting guidance of the soul from outside the Germanic world, from Rome, and values that are not those of the Indo-Europeans).
I should like to write more, but I am afraid I shall then miss today’s mail (apart from the fact that my letter will already be exceedingly heavy!).
Again, I thank you for the check (which enabled me to send you the books and this letter—neither of which I could have done, in the financial plight in which I shall remain till the end of August, when I’ll get a little money from regular teaching). Tell me please when you get the books. And shall I also send you a copy of Joy of the Sun (about Akhnaton, “for young people”). Tell me also frankly what you think of the extract I sent you out of Memories and Thoughts of an Aryan Woman.
With the everlasting greeting of the faithful,
Yours,
Savitri Dêvi Mukherji