The ceremony being held on a vacant lot in the inland city of Poona, 119 miles southeast of Bombay, was similar to thousands taking place August 15, 1947, all across the new dominion of India. It was a flag-rising. One thing, however, set the little ritual in Poona apart from most of the others. Flag slowly moving up a makeshift staff in the center of the group of five hundred men was not the flag of an independent India. It was an orange triangle, and emblazoned upon it was the symbol that in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade, the Swastika.
That ancient emblem was on the orange pennant in Poona for the same reason it had been on the banner of Hitler’s Third Reich. It was an Aryan symbol. It had been brought to India at some juncture lost in the mists of time by the first waves of Aryan conquerors to subdue the subcontinent. The men gathered about it in Poona all belonged to the R.S.S.S the quasi-fascist moment, some of whose members hadbeen assigned to task of the assassinating Jinnah along with Mountbatten in Karach forty-eight hours earlier. Hindu zealots, they saw themselves as the heirs of those ancient Arayans.
The group to which they belonged cherished a historic dream, to reconstitute a great Hindu empire from the headwaters of the Indus river to eastern Burma, from tibet to Cape Comorin. They despised Gandhi and all his works. To them, India’s national hero was the archenemy of Hinduism.. . . . ` Page 283
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Dinesh said:
That ancient emblem was on the orange pennant in Poona for the same reason it had been on the banner of Hitler’s Third Reich. It was an Aryan symbol. It had been brought to India at some juncture lost in the mists of time by the first waves of Aryan conquerors to subdue the subcontinent. The men gathered about it in Poona all belonged to the R.S.S.S the quasi-fascist moment, some of whose members hadbeen assigned to task of the assassinating Jinnah along with Mountbatten in Karach forty-eight hours earlier. Hindu zealots, they saw themselves as the heirs of those ancient Arayans.
The group to which they belonged cherished a historic dream, to reconstitute a great Hindu empire from the headwaters of the Indus river to eastern Burma, from tibet to Cape Comorin. They despised Gandhi and all his works. To them, India’s national hero was the archenemy of Hinduism.. . . . ` Page 283