The most astonishing thing about the worst Nazis is that they were incapable of perceiving their actions as monstrous atrocities and crimes. Given that context, this letter was hopeless from the start.
replies(4):
"IB TIMES: Is it true that Himmler always kept a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his pocket and read passages from it every night?
MR. & MRS. TRIMONDI: Yes, this is true. In fact, it has been well documented by Felix Kersten, his Finnish masseur, that Himmler liked to indulge in philosophical monologues in his presence. The Reichsführer SS called the Gita a high Aryan Canto. Kersten also reported that Himmler read the Vedas, especially the Rig-Veda, the speeches of the Buddha, and the Buddhist Visuddhi-magga. Himmler made frequent references to karma, especially when he was talking about providence." [0]
From reading practically the same texts, the Nazis and Ghandi came to the opposite conclusions. And why? Because the Bhagavad Gita teaches one to remove all fear of death, relinquish all responsibility for ones actions in the face of great violence and atrocity; it is a story about an interfamily war where all the characters are close to each other, and the advice is that one has a duty to fight, to act, even in the most horrifying circumstances. Both readings are valid, since non-action is a form of action, so to not be violent is also a way of "fighting back." There is no moral quality like we might understand in modern ethics, the only thing that was right was doing your duty as was right in the cosmic order, and as a warrior, your duty is to kill your enemies, no matter who they are.
It derives from what we can only reconstruct from the cultures of similar, related tribal peoples, that the original values of these peoples while they were still wandering bands of cowherders was to honor strength and victory in battle over all else, and the only articulation of this that made sense to a settled, literary people was the above. The Brahmins maintain the scholarly and religous basis of society, the Kshatriyyas, the warriors, are the administrative class, the Vaishyas the skilled laborers and the merchants, and the Sudhas the unskilled laborers, like farmers. Both the Nazis and Gandhi felt that this was an inauthentic articulation of the values of Hinduism, but the Nazis attempted to reinstate what they interpreted as the original violent and agonistic quality of the pre-settled "Aryan" peoples, whereas Gandhi took on a more modern approach, saying caste was post-vedic and not inherent to Hinduism. While Gandhi took an interpretation that aligned closely with modern values, the Nazis were supermodern: if one relinquishes all action, one also must relinquish oneself, and relinquish oneself to the hellscape of machine killing like we see in the concentration camps, to give all power to the machines which themselves will one day overcome humanity itself. They used modern anthropology to justify adopting pre-modern morals which they used to pursue their ultra-modern goals of the technological annihilation of humanity. Its called technofascism, its the ideology of the BJP, the ruling party of India today[1][2]. (His supporters are particularly active online, especially in forums like these, so I expect backlash for this claim, though not so much since they lost power in the recent elections). The only difference between the Nazis and Hindu Nationalists is that the latter believe the Aryans came from modern South Asia into the Steppe[3], and from there to Germany, whereas the Nazis believe they migrated from the Steppe to both Germany and modern South Asia[4], one ideology is the mirror of the other.
Gandhi's ideology of attempting to mold modern values over a pre-industrial society collapsed when the Soviet Union fell apart and couldn't afford to fit the bill anymore, the growth of the BJP was only a means to industrialize in a capitalist world to keep the economy growing. It was a failure because he failed to recognize that all pre-modern value systems collapse with the advance of technology. Violence is meaningless, "banal," at a mass scale.
[0]https://www.ibtimes.com/heinrich-himmler-nazi-hindu-214444 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Golwalkar# [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20150610003500/http://www.carava... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Aryanism [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis
Two main epics of Hinduism: Ramayan and Mahabharat are both stories of good vs. evil, where good ultimately wins through violence. In both cases, the good side tries to avoid violence as much as they can, but when it is necessary they don't hold back. Arjun holds back during the Mahabharat war and Krishn convinces him to fulfill his duty as a warrior.