Mainstream,
VOL LV No 26 New Delhi June 17, 2017
Lebensborn of India: Fair, Tall, Intelligent ‘Customised
baby’= Lebensborn RSS in Footprints of Fascist ’Superman’ Project}
A
significant announcement in an English national daily recently to the effect
that the ”RSS wing has a prescription for fair, tall ‘custo-mised’ babies”1
is a startling disclosure, com-parable to a secret project undertaken by the
Nazi regime in Germany under the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. This has no parallel
with the potential to provoke craze in millions of Indian hearts at home and
abroad. According to the Hindutva outfit’s subsidiary Arogya Bharati,
its health wing, a woman could deliver an “uttam santati”—a perfect,
“customised child” or ‘uttam santati’ under the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project.
If the claims of Arogya Bharati are to be taken at all seriously then Albert
Eisenstein, Shakes-peare, Rabindranath Tagore, Abraham Lincoln, Kalidas,
Aristotle and their likes would emerge from their huts of unknown hamlets. The
project, shrouded in mystery, holds the promise for miracles. And miracles are
always scientifically unverifiable, open to abuses with deception and
depravity and deplorable consequences in their train.
Arogya
Bharati lays total emphasis for success on ‘procedure’. “If the
proper procedure is followed, babies of dark-skinned parents with lesser height
can have fair complexion and grow untold taller.”2 This is the Garbh Vigyan
Sanskar project of the RSS, which, sadly, is not known to stand scientific
investigation or experiment. The RSS has jumped into a very sensitive area of
human life. The result, we may apprehend, is likely to be awe-striking and
unfortunate. Arogya Bharati plans to set up an Anusandhan Kendra, a
facilitation centre, in every State by 2020. An expectant mother will be under
obligation, for the desired result, to chant “shlokas and mantras”.3
With a decade of experiment, Guajarat has proudly marched ahead over other
States and claims to have 450 such ‘customised babies’. In an era of
technology and innovation, pre-fabrication of human child, having regard
for specification, complexion, height and IQ to suit the parents’ needs and
fancies is no more hypothetical. For a nation of one-and-a-quarter billion
population, the project holds boundless potential. We must, however, not
be under any delusion that the so-called chants of “shlokas and mantras”
will occupy the centre-stage in the project. Therefore the so-called “shlokas
and mantras” might turn out to be sources of stinking nuisance, immorality
and license for the deception of credulous masses. How it will do so only
time will unfold.
Nazi
Germany’s experiment with the Lebens-born project was a disgraceful historical
experi-ment. What is Lebensborn? Hitler’s Germany, like the RSS’ designer
child, had formulated the Lebensborn project. On December 12, 1935 Hitler’s
most trusted Heinrich Himmler (October 7, 1900-May 23, 1945), founded the
Lebensborn project, which implied the wellspring of life or fountain of life.
Himmler was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), chief of the
German Police, a military commander and a leading member of the Nazi Party.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, SS is the abbreviation of
Schutzstaffel (German: “Protective Echelon”), the black-uni-formed elite corps
and self-described “political soldiers” of the Nazi Party founded by Adolf Hitler
in April 1925 as a small group personal bodyguards. The infamous SS grew with
the success of the Nazi movement and, gathering immense police, and military
powers, became virtually a “state within a state”. SS was plainly a gigantic
evil personified.
Himmler,
Mastermind of Lebensborn
To
understand the anatomy of Lebensborn, it is clarified that Himmler was the
father of the “most secret and terrifying” project. On Hitler’s
behalf, Himmler built extermination camps. As facilitator and overseer of the
concentration camps, Himmler presided over the killing of some six million
Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani (gypsy) people, and other victims,
aggregating eleven to fourteen million civilians—mostly Polish and Soviet. The
secret project, though, simply involved extraordinary genetic engineering that
tinkered for accomp-lishing a demographic miracle. By a law enacted in
1935, the Nazi regime outlawed inter-marriages between Jews and other races.
For decades, Germany’s birthrate declined unabated. Himmler’s goal was to
reverse the decline and increase the Germanic/Nordic population of Germany to
120 million. “Himmler encouraged SS and Wermacht officers to have children with
Aryan women. He believed Lebensborn children would grow up to lead a Nazi-Aryan
nation.”4
The
Lebensborn programme (1935-45) was implemented under a registered society,
titled ‘Lebensborn Eingetragener Verein’. It offered to young girls, who
were deemed “racially pure”, the opportunity to give birth to a child in
secret. The child was then given to the SS organisation which took charge of
the child’s education and adoption. Both mother and father needed to pass a
“racial purity” test. Blond hair and blue eyes were preferred, and family
lineage had to be traced back at least three generations. Of all the women who
applied, only 40 per cent passed the racial purity test and were granted
admission to the Lebensborn programme. The majority of mothers were unmarried,
57.6 per cent until 1939, and about 70 per cent by 1940.5
The
first Lebensborn home was inaugurated in 1936 in a tiny village near Munich.
Furnishings for the homes, interestingly, were supplied from the best of the
loot from the homes of Jews who, to the Nazi regime, were inferior or extremely
hateful. There were 10 Lebensborn homes established in Germany, nine in Norway,
two in Austria, and one each in Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France, and
Denmark. Himmler himself took a special interest in the homes, choosing not
only the mothers, but also attending to the decor and even paying special
attention to children born on his birthday, October 7. The couples were mostly,
if not entirely, unknown to each other and never ever knew the whereabouts of
their child born in secrecy! Himmler himself had fathered two Lebensborn
children. Nobody with the right frame of mind is proud of the regime, which had
brought unmitigable catastrophe for human civilisation.
Did
India overlook the Initiative for Lebensborn?
In
1994 T.N. Seshan, the then Chief Election Commissioner, in an address to the
American Alumni Association in Bombay, spoke of a dream project for a
“superman”. Cross-fertilisation of Indians and Americans, the Chief Election
Commissioner emphasised, would give “birth to the best breeds in world”.6
Sadly, not many took notice of his revolutionary concept.
The
Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project, with its emphasis on designable babies with fair
complexion and high IQ, is likely to have many notable protagonists and
patrons. Recently India got a peep into the racism and complexion-fixation of
an apparatchik from a sensational television programme. A well-educated Member
of Parlia-ment told the Al Jazeera that
“If
we [Indians] were racist, why would we have the entire south (India)? Which is,
you know, completely Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra. Why
do we live with them [if we are racist]? We have blacks, black people around
us. You are denying your own nation, you are denying your ancestry, and you are
denying your culture.”7
Unmixed racism,
though the racists do not acknowledge its liability. This was Tarun Vijay whose
credentials are impeccable, if not awe-inspiring. Tarun has been the editor of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s weekly, Pancha-janya, for the last 20
long years. He is the President of the India-Africa Parliamentary Friendship
Group.8
Philosopher’s
Perception of Eugenics
The
Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project for “uttam santati”—a perfect “customised
child”—places India on the threshold of an eugenic revolution. We may
here recall with benefit Dr S. Radha-krishnan who cited an illustration of a
soldier who fought a revolutionary war, involving Great Britain and thirteen of
its North American colonies comprising the USA, to victory and ultimate
independence. A young soldier, Martin Kallakal, who inherited the noble blood of
excellent ancestry, had married a girl who was ‘physically attractive’ but
‘feeble-minded’. The result was the birth of a ‘feeble-minded boy’. The son of
Martin married a woman who was apparently of “the same low stock as himself”.
So an army of 134 feeble-minded descendants—33 immoral, 36 illegitimate,
three epileptics, three criminals and eight brothel keepers—traced their
ancestry to Martin Kallak. Later a repentant Martin married a Quaker
woman of splendid talents and noble ancestry. The union boasted of 496
descendants who included Governors, soldiers, founders of great university,
doctors, lawyers, judges, landholders, useful citizens and admirable parents
prominent in every phase of social life.9
The
celebrated Indian philosopher has under-lined that the anuloma and pratiloma
marriage practice in Hindu society helped regulate “the tendency to
indiscriminate crossing” of men and women.10 Nevertheless, we have the example
of the Bengal King, Ballal Sen, who instituted kulinism. John Wilson, the first
Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University, stated in his Indian Caste (1877)
that an illegitimate son of Ballal and his Brahman concubine was vested with
kulinism, called Pandit Ratni, the jewel of scholars. Other Bengali kulins
descended from five Brahmans imported by King Adisur from Kannauj in 10th
century AD.11 Ballal, a Baidya by caste, was Sudra.
Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee belonged to the Pandit Ratni clan. Educated
in England, he was a leading lawyer of the Calcutta High Court. As a political
leader, Bonnerjee was the founder-President of the Indian National Congress in
1885. Multiple illustrations on either side can be cited. Hindu scriptures
regard issues of mixed birth as sinful.
Till 1939,
the secret Lebensborn project did not yield results to cheer Himmler who, we
have noted already, was into fathering bastards. He issued a direct order
to all SS and police officers to father as many children as possible to
compensate for the war casualties triggering off a controversy. Many Germans
felt the acceptance of unwed mothers encouraged immorality. Eventually Himmler
retraced his step but he never condemned illegitimacy outright.
Lebensborn
soon started embracing non-German mothers. In 1942, Hitler formulated a policy
that encouraged German soldiers to fraternise with native women, with a promise
that any children they produced would be provided for. Racially fit women, most
often the girlfriends or one-night stands of SS officers, were invited to
Lebensborn homes to have their child in privacy and safety.
