The Nazis practiced the politics of gleichschaltung, or the complete ideological packaging of political, social and lived experience.
So while, on the one hand, mores of social behaviour, including sterilisation, were forcibly prescribed – by the end of Third Reich in 1945 an estimated 360,000 had been sterilised, among whom were those deemed genetically inferior or regarded as “political enemies of the state” – on the other, there was a concerted purging of unwanted ideas, as reflected in censorship protocols and even the mass book burnings that took place shortly after the Nazis came to power in May 1933, and which was reported by the newspapers of the day as “action against the un-German spirit”.
The politics of gleischschailtung continues to surface in countries ruled by leaders with fascist characteristics. India’s emergency of 1975 is a case in point. Along with the censors in the newsroom that this period saw, were the white caravans on the street – Salman Rushdie’s description of the nasbandi (sterilisation) camps that emerged at that point in his 1994 short story, ‘The Free Radio’.
The new book by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil, India’s First Dictatorship – The Emergency, 1975-77, notes how by 1976, population control targets were set for states
— source thewire.in | Pamela Philipose | 17/Jul/2021