I always tell people that Indians do not ‘get’ Adolf Hitler. In fact, as an example of what I want to do on this site – help Westerners to understand India – Hitler is a good place to start.
I was in Mumbai airport, passing through the dingy and down-at-heel domestic terminal this time, not the sleek and art-ified international one, when I spotted a proud stack of Hitler’s Mein Kampf for sale in the rather good little bookshop there. To say the least, this is not something that would go down well in London or Berlin (although apparently the Germans are reprinting the book for the first time since World War II).
For Indians, though, the prominent swastika on the cover – and on the cover of Nazism itself, if you like – speaks spiritually of the cycle of life and harmony and piety. They don’t see the symbol reversed and transformed into Hitler’s sinister black spider. But the big thing to remember is that Hitler is something of a hero in India. Not, I stress, because the Indians are at all inclined to be fascist; in fact I cannot think of any nation less inclined. Rather, it is because the Indians see Hitler as having stood up to the dictator Churchill.
Continue reading “Hitler in Mumbai – the strange case of Subhas Chandra Bose”