Hitler and the Third Reich were the centre of attention in Parliament last week. On Friday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had taken on the Opposition — which has accused the incumbent government of intolerance — by arguing that the Congress had actually suspended civil liberties and the provisions of the constitution by declaring the Emergency in 1975.
This, he argued, was not unlike Adolf Hitler’s subversion of Germany’s democratic government.
CPI(M)’s general secretary, Sitaram Yechury hurled the Hitler and Third Reich references back at the BJP by quoting from RSS-luminary MS Golwalkar, who in his book, We Or Our Nationhood Defined, expressed his admiration for how Germany ‘managed’ the Jews.
“…To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
Yechury then went on to add that the government was conveniently forgetting articles in the Constitution that spoke of equality, justice and fraternity.
He said that Jaitley’s selection of articles on cow slaughter and minority rights to score a point was worrisome. He added that while the Constitution talks about propagating scientific thought, the Prime Minister himself talks about plastic surgery of Ganesha, the mythological figure.
Earlier on Friday, Jaitley in a masterful move, went on to draw parallels between how Hitler’s Nazi party subverted a democratic constitution in Germany in 1933 and how Indira Gandhi did the same in India in 1975.
He mentioned the proclamation of emergency under false pretexts, detention of opposition members, censorship of newspapers and announcement of a 25-point economic programme in the interest of Germany. He rounded it off with the quote by deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess who had famously said, “Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler.” No one needed reminding of Devakanta Barua’s infamous proclamation, ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’.
