Hindu Eugenics

Fake news has become the rallying cry of the Right, eager to discredit the media it whines is leftwing, a characterisation that is both paranoid and demonstrably untrue. A hilarious report last week in various newspapers about the absurd advice given to prospective parents by the Arogya Bharati, a group “inspired by the RSS” (by the RSS’s own admission in a 2015 post on its Facebook page), is being pooh-poohed by some on the basis that there are no official links between the two groups. Maybe. But there is considerable overlap, in personnel and ideas. And when you seek attention by claiming you know the secret to creating a generation of tall, fair super babies in the womb and flaunting your ideology, you should perhaps not be surprised when people point and laugh. Hindutvawadis have a penchant for dubious science, some of it harmlessly chauvinistic and some of it with dangerous and ugly provenance. Crying foul over ‘fake news’ doesn’t change that fact.