Objectivity and Knowledge and Their Role in Atrocity

            Compiled somewhere between the 5th and 3rd century B.C.E., the Bhagavad Gita  is a major statement of Hindu metaphysics as well as a major justification for the caste system. The Bhagavad Gita is the sixth book of the Mahabarata, which is a vast epic which glorifies war, caste and social inequality.[1] Like the Old Testament, parts of St. John, Augustine or the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita cllaims to be the 'truth', to be objective, and justifies social power and war in the name of a supernatural agency that is beyond the cosmos.  It tells the story of Arjuna, of Kshatriya or Warrior caste, who does not want to kill in a war. Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, tells him he must kill for god and renounce the consequences of his actions as a sacrifice to god. He must do this to fulfill his caste obligation, in a disinterested and non-attached manner, because the "dharma" or law or truth demands that he fulfill his Karma. Karma justifies varna or in other words, the idea of reincarnation justifies social stratification and injustice. The suffering of the lower castes is their karma. Freedom or "Moksha" only exists at the top of the ladder of Karma, and the Bhagavad Gita is a primary document which justifies the system of caste by grounding it in elaborate metaphysical and transcendentalist ideology. Arjuna must go to battle, against members of his own kin group and friends in impersonal dedication and sacrifice to the disinterested truth.

            This doctrine would appeal to Himmler for the obvious reason that it excuses concern with the consequences of actions: all that matters is that actions be dedicated to the god-symbol which itself is the justifying principle of the Hindu social hierarchy. The discontinuity of the Brahmin caste and the Chandala or 'casteless ones" was as unbridgeable as the discontinuity between German-Aryan and Jew for the Nazis. In Himmler's case, this meant the ability to sacrifice his own moral scruples against genocide and mass murder in the interests of the Reich. In Padfield's words, Himmler derived from the Bhagavad Gita, in which defining caste is a central concern, the idea of "doing his caste duty in a disinterested, passionless way, dedicating it only to god". But god, in this case, as is usually the case, is a projection of interests and purposes upon a seemingly neutral concept. In the Bhagavad Gita the god Krishna goads Arjuna on to war because it is his Karma, his duty, his caste obligation. He must sacrifice his resistance to murder as a selfless gift to god. For Himmler, god was the Reich and Hitler was the Messiah, and all must be sacrificed for him.

            The notion of caste purity which inspired the Hindus and Himmler is closely analogous to the notion of "pure" science or "pure knowledge". 'Purity' establishes a mode or standard of perfection and an example of final ends against which hierarchies can be created, 'Truth' can be measured and success of failure can be evaluated. In a certain respect, standards of purity and objectivity create 'truth' and truth creates distance. One is supposed to be detached like the Homeric gods looking down on humanity, or like Christ the apocalyptic judge and this disinterestedness gives a sense of distance or even, for some, omnipotence and immortality. Lifton comments on the Auschwitz doctor Mengele, that  whether "in selecting for death or in killing people himself, the essence of Mengele was flamboyant detachment- one might say disinterestedness- and efficiency"[2]. Mengele was the perfect bureaucrat, embodying the virtues of the ideal scientist or academic. Mengele was described by most of Lifton's informants, not as an evil monster of myth, but as "cold", "businesslike, matter of fact".[3]

             In more recent parlance, Himmler was a 'company man', a 'team player', who thought not of himself, but of the interests of the group to which he belonged. In a similar way a business man will say that his investments are merely 'business", even if it means investing in Dow Chemical who murdered thousands in an chemical accident in Bhopal, India in the 1980's. Profits are put before people: businessmen are detached; some are able to invest in genetic engineering, breast implants, nuclear technologies or companies that destroy the rain forest. Hitler declared the doctrine of the "nothingness of the individual human being and of his continued existence in the visible immortality of the nation"[4] And Himmler spoke of the "karma of the Germanic world as a whole" in which "a man has to sacrifice himself, even though it is very hard for him: he oughtn't to think of himself". [5] 'Objectivity' seeks to eliminate the subject. In the economy of knowledge/power, the supremacy of the object of knowledge often necessitates the elimination of the subjects of knowledge, which tends to mean, to translate these concepts out of obscurity, that the elimination of subjects means the elimination of those people, beings or things that stand in the way.

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