A Warning to the Hindus

A Warning to the Hindus is a 1939 booklet by the pro-Nazi intellectual and mystic Savitri Devi. It was written in an attempt to "...make both those Hindus who are not nationalists and those Indian nationalists who do not care to call themselves Hindus into Hindu nationalists." The author projected Hindu India as the last surviving remnant of ancient Aryan spirituality, and issued this work as a warning to what she perceived as the threat of submergence through 'alien', meaning non-Aryan, influences.

Background and Summary

After working at the Hindu Mission in Calcutta for eighteen months, and having been influenced by V.D. Savarkar's concept of Hindutva, Devi concluded that "...nothing is more necessary, to-day, than to revive, to exalt, to cultivate intelligent Hinduism through the length and breadth of India." 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 the Muslim population in India. She thought the hitherto complacent response of upper-caste Hindus would result in Hinduism suffering the same fate as pagan classical Greece.

The book expresses admiration of Hinduism for its view of visible beauty, its broad artistic outlook on life and the universe, and its conception of God as both creative and destructive: living expressions of Aryan Paganism which Devi saw as being...
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