Hitler has a Following in India

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blackzeus

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:stopitslime: My Indian ninjas, come in here and explain this c00n sh*t:


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Hitler Has a Following in India - Businessweek

All that remains of the sign above the Hitler clothing store in Ahmedabad, India, is the swastika that used to dot its “i.” Citing cultural insensitivity, the municipality tore it down on Oct. 30 after the store’s owners refused to change it. Rajesh Shah, a co-owner of the shop, which opened in August, is flummoxed. “We are popular because of the name,” he says. “Our customers were not upset about the name. They said, ‘Don’t change it.’ Ahmedabadis like the name because they know Hitler [has not done] anything harmful to India.”

Lacking the sting of anti-Semitism but troubling nonetheless, the Hitler brand is gaining strength in India. Mein Kampf is a bestseller, and bossy people are often nicknamed Hitler on television and in movies.

In 2006 a cafe called Hitler’s Cross opened in Mumbai; in 2011 a pool hall named Hitler’s Den opened nearby in Nagpur. Owners of both say Hitler was a draw; the names were changed in the face of criticism from Jewish groups. (In Ahmedabad, store owner Shah says that only foreigners complained.)

Hero Hitler in Love, a Punjabi comedy about a man with an explosive temper, and the Hindi film Gandhi to Hitler, a sympathetic portrait of the dictator’s last days (Gandhi once wrote to the Führer), came out last year. A soap opera, Hitler Didi—or “big sister Hitler”—is a hit. Bal Thackeray, the leader of a far-right Hindu party who recently died, professed admiration for Hitler.

Unlike in some parts of Europe such as Russia and Austria, where Mein Kampf has been embraced by the extreme right, Hitler’s popularity in India is not the result of anti-Semitism, says Navras Jaat Aafreedi, a professor of social sciences at Gautam Buddha University in New Delhi. He says it stems from a dearth of European history classes in schools. To the extent that German history is taught, he says, it’s in the context of “the view that had Hitler not weakened the British Empire by the Second World War, the British would have never voluntarily left India.” The country’s Jewish community—some 5,300 people—is one of a few in the world to have never been persecuted by their countrymen, he says.

Solomon Sopher, president of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Mumbai, agrees: “We have never been persecuted by any caste or creed. Not even by the Muslims.” He adds that Indians are prone to “hero worship” of strong military leaders. “Lack of examples of strong leadership in India leads the Indian youth to admire Hitler,” explains Aafreedi.

That may explain why Mein Kampf, the dictator’s memoir, sells briskly in Mumbai and is printed by at least 13 publishers in India, according to Economic & Political Weekly. Mein Kampf is also becoming a must-read for some business schools applicants. “Each year, when I sit for admission interviews, there [are] books that are mentioned as favorite reads” by applicants, says Uma Narain, a professor at S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research. “This year, many referred to Mein Kampf.” While Narain says she wouldn’t dream of teaching Mein Kampf, she can understand the lure of “the autobiographical account and political ideology of a charismatic man who supposedly got things done.”

Although Shah says the Hitler clothing store’s name was apolitical, he says the controversy has been good for business. He is petitioning the courts to reverse the decision to take the name down. “We’re going to fight for the name ‘Hitler,’ ” he says.

The bottom line: The popularity of Hitler is rising in India, reflecting the national attraction to strong leaders.
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Y'all curry nikkaz think sh*t woulda been better if the Luftwaffe made it to Delhi? :heh: :what:
 
zerozero

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India has never had a single case of antisemitic persecution way back into history :ufdup: don't worry about what's going on here

in any case the article pretty much explains the whole deal
 
The Real

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Long_Live_The_Kane said:
Aryan mythology has connections to India (and the caste system), no?
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Sort of, yes. In order to understand the connection, you have to look up the history of the discovery of the Indo-European language family and how it affected the construction of European racial identity after mixing with racial pseudoscience and early anthropology. The modern Indian identification with Hitler has a lot to do with that, and with the colonial history.

While I don't endorse Hitler support in any way, it also has to do with the colonial context and Hitler's status as "the enemy of my enemy." For example, while it is absurd to us, and in general, to think of Hitler as an admirable figure in any way, people in the West uncritically idolize and praise Winston Churchill all the time for fighting the Nazis, even though he refused to give India and other colonial territories independence (while sending their soldiers out to fight in the war.) I find that ironic and absurd as well.
 
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The Real said:
Sort of, yes. In order to understand the connection, you have to look up the history of the discovery of the Indo-European language family and how it affected the construction of European racial identity after mixing with racial pseudoscience and early anthropology. The modern Indian identification with Hitler has a lot to do with that, and with the colonial history.

While I don't endorse Hitler support in any way, it also has to do with the colonial context and Hitler's status as "the enemy of my enemy." For example, while it is absurd to us, and in general, to think of Hitler as an admirable figure in any way, people in the West idolize and praise Winston Churchill all the time for fighting the Nazis, even though he refused to give India and other colonial territories independence (while sending their soldiers out to fight in the war.) I find that absurd as well.
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Right people praise Churchill for fighting the Nazi's.
Not keeping India under the yoke of Colonialism.
 
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88m3 said:
Right people praise Churchill for fighting the Nazi's.
Not keeping India under the yoke of Colonialism.
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Yes, but the two are closely related, insofar as there is a great irony in fighting Nazis, citing their tyranny/invasions while refusing Black and brown people in your own empire their freedom and justifying your own colonial invasions.

By that logic, is the Indians praising Hitler for being a patriot, uniting Germans, etc is equally justifiable, since it's taking one decontextualized positive and ignoring its inextricable negative/other side of the coin? I'm not suggesting that Hitler and Churchill are the same, but both views seem uncritical to me.
 
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The Real said:
Yes, but the two are closely related, insofar as there is a great irony in fighting Nazis, citing their tyranny/invasions while refusing Black and brown people in your own empire their freedom and justifying your own colonial invasions.

By that logic, is the Indians praising Hitler for being a patriot, uniting Germans, etc is equally justifiable, since it's taking one decontextualized positive and ignoring its inextricable negative/other side of the coin? I'm not suggesting that Hitler and Churchill are the same, but both views seem uncritical to me.
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wow no just no

I get that you have a horse in this race but factually it falls short.
 
zerozero

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88m3 said:
wow no just no

I get that you have a horse in this race but factually it falls short.
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It's true breh. I know you fancy yourself a harrumphing 18th century british lord for some reason but if you step out of that mental frame the excessive Churchill adulation in the UK and the US doesn't really examine his role from the perspective of other peoples. Dude was a racist imperialist and everything
 
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