Himmler and the Hindu World Machine: Duty, Purity and "Disinterested" Imperialism

This Nietzschean view of cruelty and the necessity of atrocity, expressed in the above quote, has other sources besides Nietzsche.[1] The Christian will to atonement is obvious enough: Himmler feels he must kill Jews, even though he has misgivings about it as an act of atonement to higher principles. But there is also a Hindu element at play here. In his biography of Himmler, Padfield notes that Himmler was devoted to the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, and "he never went anywhere without it". Padfield notes that this fact is "important for any attempt to understand what Himmler believed he was doing".[2] The question arises then: why should this Hindu text, obscure in Germany during Himmler's time, be connected in a fundamental way to one of the worst atrocities in history?

The Bhagavad Gita not only justified the class and caste system of classifications that was important to the Ayran supremacy that the Nazis sought, but the idea of Karma in this book also generates of notion of "disinterestedness", and thus of objective, impersonal service to duty and obligation. The notion of "caste purity" is evidently related to the notion of intellectual hygiene, thought control, 'pure knowledge', or ideological imposition. Purity of knowledge evidently has a relation to caste purity. One of England's Prime Ministers, Lord Rosebery, observed at the height of the British Empire that 'what was Empire, but the predominance of race?". [3] The service of science to British imperialism was central, and detachment from results and the performance of duty were cardinal virtues of the British aristocracy. The university system in England also served the empire. The purity of knowledge was the natural concomitant of the pure race of English aristocracy. Pure knowledge served pure races or classes, especially European ones, in the 19th century, as today. But one can trace the relation of the purity of knowledge and caste much further back than Britain.

In the case of India, the concepts of purity and duty acted as the justification of caste separation and thus of vast social injustice. The formation of the caste system in India appears to have arisen as a result of the conquest of the indigenous Dravidian peoples by the invading, lighter skinned Aryans of the north. The cause of this seems to have been the increasingly arid conditions of the Steppe area somewhat east of the Caspian Sea, due to retreating Arctic snows, some 5 to 10 thousand years ago, which drove the Aryans or Indo-Europeans into the more fertile south. The enslavement of the Dravidian peoples. supposed to have taken place between 2000 and 500 B.C.E. created the caste system. The term "Aryan" is from the Sanskrit for "free" (arya), as opposed to slave (dasa).[4] The Aryans used various derogatory epithets to describe the Dravidians and other peoples of the sub-continent river valleys. They used such terms to describe the people they conquered as asuras (demons), dasas (blacks/slaves), krishna tvachah (black people),[5] anschs (without noses) akarmanah (without ceremonies), ayjvah (without sacrifices), adeva (godless), anindra, (without Indra) and pashus (two footed beasts).[6] The idea of Karma was an enabling mechanism which justified treating other people with different noses or different skin color as inferior. It was their Karma to be thus devalued, and the knowledge system or the religion was there to 'prove' their inferiority as well as their duty to submit to the resulting injustices.
Of course, this is just a theory, called the Aryan Invasion theory, and it has been brought into question by various archeological evidence. If the Aryan invasion theory is false, as it maybe, then there must be other explanations for the development of the caste system in India. Certainly the idea of Karma plays a central role in justifying the caste system. But how exactly this system came about is not clear to me, if the Aryan Invasion Theory is not true. It does appear in any case, that the caste system did develop partly our of conflict between the Dravidian south and the Aryan north.

[1] One notices also that Himmler, in this passage is portraying himself as a victim. The victimizer who sees himself as a victim is common in regimes of knowledge/power. Many powerful Americans in government saw themselves as victimized by the Vietnamese, when in fact, the opposite was true. Cult leaders often see themselves of victims, the latest example being David Koresh in 1993, who burned his followers to death in an apocalyptic fit of desperation. The image of Christ and Socrates are mythical themes which follow the same pattern: unjust death is used as a means of promotion of a theory, a religion or a will to power.

[2] Ibid. pg.402

[3] Morris, James Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire New York: Harvest Hill 1968 pg. 132

[4] Organ, Troy Wilson Hinduism: Its Historical Development Woodbury N.Y.: Barrons Educational Series. 1974 pg 190

[5] The use of the word Krishna here is interesting. The word Krishna means dark, and the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is always represented as black or blue in Hindu art. The implication is that Krishna, by being made to speak in the language and concepts of the Ayran elite, represents the complete assimilation of the Dravidian underclass to the Aryan system of knowledge and social control. This is a poltical theory of how the Krishna image came into being. If the Aryan Ivasion theory is not true, it may still be true that the image of Krisha as black has an assimilationist meaning. In any case, a similar example, apparently occurring for similar reasons is the Virgin of Guadeloupe. This painting, supposedly the result of a miracle, appears to be a fraud. It's purpose was to picture the Virgin Mary as an indigenous Mexican, so as to seduce the indigenous people into the orbit of the Christian caste system of the conquistadors. The use of symbolism in art can be a part of a system of knowledge/power and serve its purposes, as in these two cases. In the chapter on Von Nuemann I will be discussing the use of female images to justify the terror brought by some systems of knowledge/power.

[6] Ibid. pg. 41