4,091 words
New Delhi
30 September 1973
I waited to write to you on my 68th birthday.
My dear young comrade,
This is first to thank you, from the depths of my heart, for your royal contribution of one hundred dollars ($100) to the costs of the printing of my book in French (Souvenirs et réflexions d’une Aryenne). Nobody (save Mr. Mukherji himself in the old days when he used to earn) has done as much as you for the forwarding of my humble services to the Aryan cause. I do wish you could read French — or at least I wish you knew someone well versed in that tongue who could translate the texts to you — one of our people, naturally. I should then send you the “formas” of the book one by one as they come out (after so much correcting, reprinting, recorrecting, for the printers do not know French, and moreover are utterly careless, as are all laborers here.
You would see it is the justification not only of all we stand for, but of all that our people did (of all that for which the silly world blames us so thoroughly) in the name, not of Germany, not even of “the necessities of the struggle in wartime,” but . . . of eternal Tradition; of the very spirit of that Book of Books (the oldest philosophical poem in an Aryan language) the Bhagavad Gîta.
In my (yet unprinted, for ever lack of money) book in German, Hart wie Kruppstahl (finished in August 1963) I call our Hitler faith “The wisdom of starry space” (“Die Weisheit des sternhellen Weltraumes”), and that is the idea which I have tried, all these decades, to put forward. We are not just the political opposite of the Communists. Anything but! We and they are of different natures. Not only do they work “in the interest of man, and man alone” (as do the Christians, by the way) but they themselves admit that their philosophy is a “a phase” in the history of evolution of thought (linked, in their eyes, with the evolution of technology). We know the biological laws our faith is based upon are not only true “here” and among human races but are applied by Nature Herself to all living beings, and that upon the furthest planet, revolving around “suns” whose light will never reach us, so many thousands of light-years away from us they are. Sentences picked out of Mein Kampf (especially Chapt. 11) or out of our Führer’s speeches, are true, and always were and always shall be true, on any planet where life exists.
When people who are against us and who, at the same time, have the power to deprive me of my teaching job (people from the Alliance Française, for instance) happen to ask me in course of conversation, who is my “maître à penser” (master of thought), I reply, “Lykurgos” — the Legislator of Sparta, ninth century BC. The laws laid down by this great one — all aimed at racial purity and warlike fitness — were said not to be “his” but to have been dictated to him by the Sun god Himself, “golden haired” (Chrysokomos) Apollo, the Hyperborean, from His holiest sanctuary at Delphi. Generally people of this twentieth century AD are much too dull, or much too ill-informed about Antiquity, to be struck by the identity of Lykurgos’ laws and those set up by our Führer (the famous “Nuremberg Laws” of 15 September 1935 for instance). And nobody dreams of bearing a grudge to a woman of partly Greek origin for an enthusiastic devotion to a Greek legislator nearly 3,000 years old.
While he was setting the basis of Spartan society — that most Aryan of all Greek communities — fierce king Assurnasirpal was ruling Assyria with an iron hand; Ahab was king of Israel (in Samaria); and Carthage was being founded, nearby what is today Tunis. I don’t know — for archaeologists contradict one another — whether in far-away America (Mexico), at that time, the old culture of Teotihuacan was yet flourishing or not. (Tiahuanaco, in South America is, of course, millenniums older.)
Only once did an interlocutor tell me: “In that case . . . you must be an admirer of Adolf Hitler!!” To which I replied that “on principle,” I “never discuss any contemporary or nearly contemporary historical figure” — as one “cannot judge history but from a distance.”
The great advantage of Hindu society (with all the material inconveniences: shortage of [rationed] milk; shortage of butter; shortage of bread; shortage of tinned fish for the cats, etc., etc., cuttings of electricity), the great advantage is that nobody cares whether one is a disciple of this Leader or that one, and there are, among Hindus, quite a number of admirers of our Führer. My new landlord, for instance, who not only does not object to my two pictures of our Leader in my room (as so many is Europe would) but borrowed from me my unique copy of The Lightning and the Sun and . . . liked it!! (While a European colleague to whom I had lent it years ago, in Calcutta, found it “a vicious piece of Nazi propaganda.”) One is free here — free to wear jewels stamped with the holy Swastika, all sold here. Both my pairs of Swastika earrings — one red, white, and black (black swastika on white circle, surrounded by red circle, and sun rays) were bought in Calcutta long ago — and not made to order. On the gates of Hindu temples you often have two Swastikas, one so [image] (like ours) which is a solar symbol (and a “world ????’ symbol) and the other [image], which is a chthonian symbol. The two together means the “holy marriage of Sun and Earth” — and Earth’s fecundation by the Sun. But on Indian jewelry, one only wears the “destrogyre” one, i.e., “ours” [image], the solar symbol. To wear the other — chthonian — one by itself would be tragically unlucky!!!
By the way, notice that the Theosophists have chosen as their sign the chthonian swastika alone — a gesture which itself tells what they are and what forces they represent. By the way, do you know the book Theosophy: A False Religion by the French author René Guénon? It is not to be found in France, anywhere, after 1945. Queer, isn’t it?
I am sorry you took me (or nearly took me) for a Rosicrucian, because that body reprinted A Son of God. I explained how that came to pass in my last letter. I needed the £20 to take “Black Velvet” to the only new mistress I could trust (in France) and pay my rail fare back to Germany in 1955. But even so I wrote to Mr. Mukherji before accepting the offer. He wrote back: “If the Devil is wanting to reprint any of the sacred writ unaltered, let him do it! But see to it that it is ‘unaltered.’” I wrote to Severs and said I accepted, “provided I can read the proofs.” He agreed on paper. But proofs were never even sent to me. Moreover, in the text published in London, whose proofs I corrected (1946) some passages did not appear in the printed pages. This is an instance taken from pages 254-55 (of the first edition, the London one):
In the Ancient World, as long as religion was a national concern, and connected with practices rather than with beliefs, its actual separation from life was impossible. In one way, that may seem better than what we see now. And the bold ideologists who, in recent years, in Europe, have endeavored to wipe out altogether the spirit if not the name of Christianity and to raise the Nation — based on the narrowly physiological ideal of race — as the object of man’s ultimate devotion, those ideologists, we say, may seem wiser and more honest than their humanitarian antagonists. If religion indeed does not, as it is, respond any longer to the needs of life, it is better to change it. It is better openly to brush aside two thousand years of errors (if errors they be) and to come back to the national gods of old, and to be true to them to the bitter end, than to keep on rendering divine honors to the man who said “Love thy neighbor,” and to wage a war of extermination upon men of rival nations whom one has not even the excuse of considering as “infidels” or “heretics.” There is no hypocrisy in the votaries of the religion of Race, as in those of the religion of man. The only weakness one could point out in their creed — wherever it is artificially separated from the Religion of Life, which always did and does buttress it in the minds of its best exponents and most intelligent defenders — is that it has been transcended and that it is therefore difficult to go back to it, even if one wishes to. The religion of man itself has been transcended long before its birth. The truth is that both are too narrow, too passionately one-sided, too ignorant of great realities that surpass their scope, to satisfy any longer men who think rationally and who feel the beauty and the seriousness of life, unless they be integrated into the Religion of Life.
And again page 255:
Moreover the mystic of race in its narrower aspect (or of nation or of any entity with a narrower denotation than that of “man”) is unassailable unless and until the ideology of “man,” inherited by Free Thought from Christianity, is one and forever pushed into the background in favor of an ideology of Life: For if indeed one is to believe that living Nature, with all its loveliness, is made for man to use for his profit, then why should not one admit with equal consistency that the bulk of mankind is made for the few superior races, classes, or even individuals to exploit at will?
Now the three passages, which in this letter I copied and surrounded by a line,[1] [1] were just left out after having appeared in the proofs which I had read. When I pointed it out to Mr. Severs and asked him for a reprinting of the pages, he replied this would be “too expensive” and moreover the passages “omitted by mistake” were “not that important,” and their omission would not impair the diffusion of the book . . . “quite the contrary.”
I do not know what cuttings or alterations were done in the American (Rosicrucian) edition, as I have not the text in hand.
I was, of course (and many times), solicited to join such bodies as the female Masonry “le Droit humain” (the title is enough to ???? me forever!) or . . . Theosophy. When I was in Iceland (1946–47) the Theosophists were willing to lend me their hall for two lectures on “The Aton Cult” and Aryan thought. (I tried to lecture in Icelandic but had to break off and continue in English as my Icelandic was not yet good enough. It became very good, but later on, in 1947.)
Then I was invited to the president’s house — one Gretar Fels and his wife. Gretar Fels had a brother, Ragnar, whom I met later on, and who was on our side. (The two brothers did not talk to each other!)
One day Gretar Fels told me that “Master Rajkoski” — one of the shadowy “Great Teachers” of the Theosophists — had been incarnated as the famous “Count of St. Germain” (a French figure of the eighteenth century) and “was also seen in London during the recent war” — 1939–1945 — “where he worked for the United Nations.” I replied that in my eyes a “Master” who “worked for the United Nations” was just no master at all and was glad not to be a Theosophist.
The building in which Gretar Fels and his wife lived comprised, besides their first floor flat, the Theosophical Hall and . . . a (first floor) meeting place for the Freemasons of Reykjavik. “Practically every Theosophist is also a Freemason and every Freemason as Theosophist,” the man once told me, as he locked me in the room where I was sitting “for an hour or two” . . . until a Masons’ meeting that was to take place should be over, “for no non-Mason should be in the building (let alone in the room!) during the meeting.
As for Rosicrucians, I was once — February 1952 — contacted by an unknown woman from Amsterdam, Mrs. (or Miss) Engelhardt, 92 Nassau Gasse, who wrote me an enthusiastic letter about A Son of God which she had read, and requested me “to join the Rosicrucians,” the real founder of which — she wrote! — was none other than . . . Akhnaton’s great-great grandfather, Thutmose the Third, the Conqueror!! (As though that great warrior-like monarch, who conducted as many as fourteen repressive expeditions into Syria, who fought and won the first battle of Meddigo [1479 or 78 BC] had the time to deal with such stuff as that with which the Rosicrucians are concerned!!)
The woman even sent me the address of one Jeanne Guesdon, in Ville. St. Georges, near Paris, to contact in view of my adhering to the Rosicrucian order. I replied: “One question alone may I ask: Is anybody’s adherence to your ‘spiritual’ order likely, or even eventually, to come into clash with his or her faith — the faith not being any Christian, Islamic, or Jewish one?” Reply: “We Rosicrucians are tolerant and accept people of all faiths. However, I have asked the Grand Master at Amsterdam before I write further, and the told me to ask you frankly what your faith is. Is it Hinduism? You were in India many years.”
My answer: “I am an out-and-out believer in Adolf Hitler and in His mission. And if I officially embraced Hinduism as early as 1934, it is because, of all religions looked upon as such, it is the one which ‘fits’ with Hitlerism perfectly. I became conscious of being one of Adolf Hitler’s people in April 1929, in . . . Palestine (of all places!!) where I had followed a Greek pilgrim’s party, to see what the cradle of Christianity looks like, before I started for good fighting the influence of that foreign creed in Greece, and elsewhere . . .”
The answer I got for that sincere profession of faith was an outcry of 34 (thirty-four only) pages of close writing: “You gave me the shock of my life. What? That — your faith?” “Don’t you feel for the six million poor Jews that your people murdered?”
What a silly, utterly silly question, by the way! If an unknown pen correspondent admitted to me being a Communist, I should not dream of asking him or her whether he or she “feels for the poor Tsar Nicholas II, and his family, murdered at Ekaterinburg in 1917.” It should be clear to me that if the person is a Communist, naturally he or she “does not care a damn for the Tsar and his wife and kids” — any more than I care for the Yids.
Only our people, using too little brains in their zeal, mostly killed off the wrong ones, while allowing the dangerous ones to slip through the meshes of the net. The Jewish Socialist former Prime Minister of France, immensely wealthy and author of well-selling sex books — Léon Blum — was taken into custody, but for unknown reasons, well-treated and safe.
To come back to the Rosicrucians: joining them was henceforth out of the question, in Mrs. Engelhardt’s eyes. I had never intended joining them. Not having the right (as a non-German) to be a member of the NSDAP in all its pristine glory, I systematically refused to become a member of any organization — including the Hindu traditionalist “Hindu Mahasabha” and its militant section, the RSS (Rastriya Seva Sangha) before which I lectured a number of times, and whose young members loved me — not to speak of bogus bodies such as the Theosophists and Rosicrucians!
In the meantime, Jeanne Guesdon had sent me a form of adhesion to fill and a letter telling me my faith “did not matter” — that the Rosicrucians were “a purely spiritual organization” in view of one’s spiritual progress and let one free to have whatever faith one liked. Among the questions I remember, two had struck me: “What is your race?” was one. (So Rosicrucians were interested in their adherents’ “race” — to distinguish Jews from Goyim, I suppose.) The other was: “Do you obey the laws of the land in which you live, even if they come in clash with your conscience?” Of course I don’t! There are in Europe — especially in today’s Germany — “laws” against any “exaltation of Nazism.” I am damned if I ever took any of them into account. I am also a “conscientious objector” as far as vaccinations, inoculations, etc. are concerned. These preventative health measures are based upon experimentation upon animals, which I — my conscience, not the “universal conscience” of the Nuremburg judges — look upon as criminal. But I did not fill out the form. I tore it in four, and the bits went into the wastepaper basket. And I heard no more of Rosicrucians, or Theosophists.
I mention the Thülegesellschaft somewhere in this French book of mine, being slowly printed in Calcutta. Our Führer was a member of it; so was Hess; so was Himmler; so was Alfred Rosenberg — and of course Dietrich Eckart (dead on 23 December 1923) who is said to have introduced Adolf Hitler into its ranks. The Society, founded in 1912 by one named Rudolf von Sebottendorf, who had widely traveled in the East — India, Tibet, Japan — is said to be still in existence, but with a total change of spirit. So I never tried to find out where it is to be met, and who is in it today.
There were initiatic bodies older than it that prepared it, such as the “New Templars,” founded by the former superior in the convent in which the child Adolf Hitler received for two years or so general education. Father Heger had had formerly Swastikas set up in every corner of the place (on his return from a long journey to the East). One was on the back of the Abbatial chair, which nine-year-old Adolf must have had before his eyes every day, as he stood in the choir of children, at that chapel.
I don’t believe in any profound difference between “English” and “French” Masonry. The difference between the “Grand Orient” and the “Grande Loge de France” is that the former has no profession of faith in “god” while the latter has. But the one “Masonic” body of which I have heard which had (at least at the time of its appearing) a totally different spirit from that of most Masonic bodies, is the “Old Prussian Lodges,” founded by King Frederic the Great (born 24 January 1712, died 17 August 1786, i.e., three years before the outbreak of the French Revolution). These “Old Prussian Lodges” had a national if not (secretly) a racialist spirit — as could be expected from the Founder.
You didn’t tell me whether you liked Impeachment of Man, and what you think of the passages of my French book I translated and copied for you in one of my former letters — in particular, of my parallel between A. K. Mukherji (the man behind Subhas Chandra Bose) and Subhas Chandra Bose himself.
You were born 6 March 1947. I was then in Iceland — where I had gone on 8 November 1946 to escape the awful postwar atmosphere of England. (I had tried in vain to go to Germany. But could get no “permit” — one needed one then.) I was 42 on 30 September 1947. So you are young enough to be my grandson. You’ll surely have an image of “Dancing Shiva” — Nataraj — “the Dancing King” — from me, either for your birthday (your 27th) or for this year’s Winter Solstice festival.
In the meantime, I’d very much appreciate the favor if you could send me a photo of yours. I’d like to know what a young disciple of our Führer looks like, who possesses that which He appreciate more than mere “brains” (in the usual sense of the word), more than erudition — character; consistency. In exchange, I’ll send you one of my former ones — one in which I am 28 (a little older than you are now) and so happy — full of the grandest of hopes; full of confidence in the future. (Fancy! It was in glorious 1933!) I still wore “Greek dresses.” Took to saris, which do look “ancient Greek” a little later. But I’m getting the one photo I have of those days photographed, and I’ll send you a copy. Also, one of the days I was leafleting in occupied Germany — as you heard in that party. I am at the railway station of Alfeld and der Leine on the photo, and I am 43 — already old enough to be your mother. I am not sending you my present-day old wrinkled face — stamped with the bitterness of defeat, the remorse of not having listened to Mr. Mukherji when I first met him and he told me, “Go back to Europe! Go straight to Him who truly is life and resurrection — the head of the Third German Reich. He alone will understand you and appreciate your zeal and capacities!”
The damned fool I was, thinking myself “useful” — irreplaceable!! — in India, for I was the only disciple of our Führer able to speak and write Hindi and Bengali (and understand a couple of other Indian languages). I would go, surely, said I, but “later on” — when I have something “to show” the Leader of my activities in the East. War broke out. Then he (Mr. Mukherji) arranged (via the Italian Consul; Italy was not yet at war) that I should, via Italy — where I should stay and lecture a couple of months (I knew Italian) — go to Germany and broadcast war propaganda under Goebbels, in Bengali and in modern Greek. (They already had someone for Hindi.) I was delighted — but alas could not go. My passport (which was to be renewed) was delivered to me only months later, when all roads were blocked. I was stuck in India for the duration of the war. Mr. Mukherji — who in the meantime had given me his name and protection (I could have been interned, as so many of our people were here in India in 1939) — decided that he and I should do our best for Germany’s far eastern Allies, the Japanese, soon coming into the war. And so we did. He is the one who introduced Subhas Chandra Bose to the Japanese and helped organize the “Indian Liberation Army” on the Burma front. I played my little part on the quiet. But that was not what I could have done in Europe. And I should then have seen the Führer, whom I never saw. Whatever bitterness I might suffer now, it all serves me right for having been a damned fool.
I was very much touched at your description of the way you tried and tried to meet me or get in touch with me. You were in Greece in 1969 you say. So was I — till October 1970. Why did we not meet there?
I did not stay: the indifference of the people there to animals makes me indignant. They are worse than here. Here at least I feed stray cats and dogs in the street without anyone throwing stones at me or mocking me.
I wish I could actually meet you one day, never mind where — perhaps in Braunau, in front of “the” House. The three windows on the right (top floor) are those of the room in which He was born — at 6:18 pm.
Thanks once more for your touching generosity. I’ll send you one or two copies of the French book when it is printed for eventual French knowing friends of yours. I received your letter and gift on the 26th — the day the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian bomb in 1687 and exploded. (The Turks had made a powder depot of it.) But I waited for the 30th to write to you — to have the pleasure of talking to you (from a distance) on that day– as to the grandson who will carry on the struggle and keep the flame alive, when I (and all us ???? of the “first batch” are dead and gone). I often think of death — without fear, but also without a hasty longing to leave “the light of the Sun” — and the creatures that love me.
With my very best remembrances and with the everlasting greeting of the faithful.
Savitri Dêvi Mukherji
“Wenn Alle untrue warden
So blieben wir doch true . . .”
(“When all become unfaithful,
So we faithful remain . . .”)
Do you know that beautiful song of the SS?
Note
[1] [2] Printed above in bold. — Ed.