Who knew that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) ideal of perfection was Priyanka Gandhi and the rest of the Gandhi clan? After all, according to a Sunday Express news report, the RSS has been working for the last decade to ensure that genetic defects are removed in children, and they grow to be tall, slim and fair. Basically, not look like most RSS members. But do look like the Gandhi clan. And why not? Everyone wants to upgrade and improve. And so does the RSS. They’ve been trying to get rid of those khaki shorts for the last few years. And now they want to get rid of being short and stout and dark.

On Sunday, I read with a mix of horror and humour that the worthies at RSS, have focused their intellect on something new. Spokespersons from the Garbh Vigyan Sanskar project of the RSS’ health wing Arogya Bharati, have explained that a project to ensure the birth of an “uttam santati” — a perfect, “customised child”, was launched in Gujarat over a decade ago. This project has now been taken up at the national level in 2015 and is assisted by the Sangh’s education wing Vidya Bharati, which has branches in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and will soon extend its tentacles to Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The national convenor of the project, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Ayurveda, medicine and surgery, Dr Narwani, “Our main objective is to make a samarth Bharat (strong India) through uttam santati. Our target is to have thousands of such babies by 2020”. It gets better. The equally educated Dr Hitesh Jani, national convenor – Arogya Bharati has said, “The parents may have lower IQ, with a poor educational background, but their baby can be extremely bright. If the proper procedure is followed, babies of dark-skinned parents with lesser height can have fair complexion and grow taller”.

There are all sorts of tips and procedures. That we darkies need to stand on our heads while copulating under the light of the half-moon while the RSS pracharaks dance around us, sprinkling gau mutra on us while chanting the Gayatri Mantra. Okay, I exaggerate. But, they will prescribe when we should have sex according to the lunar calendar, forbid people from having sex after pregnancy, prescribe a calcium-rich diet and so on. None of which is really out of form. Except when coupled with statements such as that this will ensure “tall, fair, customised” children. And that if a mother “chants shlokas and mantras, it helps in the mental growth of the baby… if she leads such a life, there will be no labour pain and the baby will gain up to 300g more weight”. I think one of the RSS geniuses should chant shlokas and then try and push a four kilo, tall and fair baby out of a two-inch opening, and let us know if he felt any pain or not.

The clincher though is, where the inspiration from this programme came from. Control your excitement. Remember how all us naysayers and anti-nationals keep comparing RSS unfairly to the Nazis? Which is unfair, to the Nazis at least. Well, RSS has given us the opportunity to do so, on a Hindu platter.

“According to the office-bearers, the project was inspired by Germany”, which they claimed had “resurrected itself by having such signature children through Ayurvedic practices within two decades after World War II”. Varshney has said that the project was inspired from the advice a senior RSS ideologue received over 40 years ago in Germany.

The fair-skin loving RSS is essentially following the Nazi Lebensborn or “Fountain of Life” programme, by which the short and not particularly fair Hitler tried to create a perfect Aryan race. Between 1935 and 1945, 10,000 children in Germany and an estimated 9,000 in Norway were born as part of a Nazi eugenics plan using social Darwinism to build an Aryan “master-race” or super-breed of humanity. Much like the “uttam santati” – the perfect child. Disabled children were sent to concentration camps. Lebensborn homes, with designated mothers, raised the perfect children this programme birthed. This was basically an expression of the same belief that the RSS is touting – that the white race is the most superior.

That the RSS thinks that this is a programme worth emulating, even if they cannot pronounce the name and seem to be referring to either Ernst Haeckel or Hitler himself, as “Mother of Germany, is horrific.  This is why we shouldn’t look shocked when ex-MP Tarun Vijay makes a statement that Indians are so inclusive because we live with the dark-skinned South Indians. Or that Fair & Lovely is the hottest selling item from Hindustan Levers Limited. Or that UB-Fair is even a product. Or that our female actors and news anchors essentially paint themselves with foundation 10 shades fairer than their actual complexion. Or that matrimonials always state that the bride is “fair” or “wheatish”, never “dusky” or “dark”. Or when the beauty parlour owner says, “kitni tan ho gayi ho”, not realising that that is your skin tone.

We are obsessed with fair skin in India. And I agree, there is nothing wrong with having a personal preference for dark skin over fair or vice versa.  But when a political organisation, with the reach and spread of the RSS, starts touting these myths and fallacies about how “tall, fair-skinned” people are more equal than others, it is a cause to worry. As is the fact that they think any of Nazi Germany’s programmes of discrimination are worth adopting and introducing. Someone should let them know that the first people who would have been made into lamps and soaps by the Nazis, would have been the RSS with their Dravidian roots, dark skin and portly figures.

But if it wasn’t for such bizarre endeavours, how would we mock the RSS and its ideologies? I propose an RSS national workshop on how to incarcerate dark-skinned shorties in India. Maybe punish us by making us swing a stick in the sun while dressed as a grammar school student? The possibilities are endless.