 Title page of the 1939 edition | |
| Author | Savitri Devi |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Hindu Mission |
Publication date | 1939 |
| Followed by | Defiance |
A Warning to the Hindus is a 1939booklet bySavitri Devi. It was written to furtherIndian nationalism by way of Nazi ethics and spirituality. Published in Calcultta, its preface was written byGanesh Damodar Savarkar.
Savitri believed the Indian people to be ofAryan descent, and thus sought to promote explicitly Nazi ideals, such as ethnic purity andxenophobia, withinIndia. Within the text, emphasis is focused on many supposed horrors the future could hold should India choose to acceptdiversity and rejectNazi Aryanism. The author projected Hindu India as the last surviving remnant of ancientAryan spirituality, and issued this work as a warning to what she perceived as the threat of submergence through 'alien,' meaning non-Aryan, influences, such asIslam.
A Warning to the Hindus is Devi’s attempt to alert Hindus to the threat of submergence and cultural alienation, which she saw as resulting from the disproportional growth of theMuslim population in India, "Mohammedanization".[1][2] She argues for Hinduism as the national religion of India, and that it was the only source of the real India.[3][4] She thought the hitherto complacent response of upper-caste Hindus would result in Hinduism suffering the same fate as paganclassical Greece, and argued that:[5]
It becomes more and more clear that what the Hindus need, is to recover along with their national consciousness, their military virtues of old: and to become a military race.
The book expresses admiration of Hinduism for its view of visible beauty, its broad artistic outlook on life and theuniverse, and its conception ofGod as both creativeand destructive: living expressions of AryanPaganism, which Devi saw as being lost in theWest. As an outspoken Nazi, she criticizesJudaism,Christianity, andIslam ascreedal religions, and for being narrowlyanthropocentric, in contrast with Hinduism, which is presented asbiocentric.
Devi proposes that the numerical decline of Hinduism could be successfully remedied by a relaxation of the strict rules implicit in thecaste system, which would have the additional benefits of developing Hindu solidarity and nationalist sentiment. Additionally, she argues that women should play a more active role in fostering devotional nationalism in the home with shrines toShivaji and other national heroes.
Savitri Devi was a French-Greek occultist and Nazi sympathizer who converted to Hinduism, later becoming an influential figure in neo-Nazi and alt-right thought.[1][6] She believedAdolf Hitler was the avatar of the Hindu godVishnu.[6] The book was published working at the Hindu Mission inCalcutta for about eighteen months, and having been influenced byVinayak Damodar Savarkar's concept ofHindutva.[4]
A Warning to the Hindus was first published by Brahmachari Bijoy Krishna of the Hindu Mission inCalcutta in 1939,[2][4] with a foreword byGanesh Damodar Savarkar (brother ofVinayak Damodar Savarkar).[6] It was translated into sixIndian languages, includingBengali,Hindi, andMarathi. It was re-published in 1953 by, Prammila Prakashan inDelhi[7] and in 1993 by Promilla Paperbacks (New Delhi,ISBN 81-85002-40-1).
Al Jazeera claimed in 2018 that the book was then still "widely read and highly regarded among Hindu nationalists".[1]