Nazis in India?

Nazis in India? Well, no. First of all, there is no Nazi remnant hiding hear, this isn't Argentina or Paraguay in the 60's. Rather, I'm thinking of two phenomena, one quite benign and one quite troubling. Let's start with the benign story first. 

A neighboring property displaying a swastika

This photo shows a swastitka (卐) (Sanskrit: स्वस्तिक). In fact, well before the Nazis appropriated this symbol, it had been a staple Hindu icon from the days of the Indus Valley civilization. Buddhists and Jains later incorporated the symbol as well into their traditions. Wikipedia says the following about translating the term: 

swastika literally means "to be good". Or another translation can be made: "swa" is "higher self", "asti" meaning "being", and "ka" as a suffix, so the translation can be interpreted as "being with higher self".

 A far cry from the Nazis! So how did it arrive in Hitler's Germany? 

The symbol arrived in Europe centuries before its appropriation by the Nazis, and it was considered a symbol of good luck. However, in 1920 the symbol suffered some bad luck of its own when the Nazis adopted it. Based on their crackpot theories of race, the Nazis designated the swastika as a symbol of the Aryan race. Nazis believed that "race" (as they defined it in their warped way) was the controlling factor in society and politics and that the Aryans were "the master race". Aryans were the group of people who invaded and conquered north India centuries ago, and somehow this morphed in Nazi ideology as a manifestation of the "master race". Crackpot science carries the day. 
 
In sum, if you read the Wikipedia article about it, the swastika has a long and famous history, and Nazi adoption of it was a temporary and unfounded perversion. If you come to India or see it elsewhere in South Asia, don't be alarmed. It's intentions are good. 




   When I first came to India and began haunting the bookstores, I kept coming across the title shown in the image above. At first I treated it as a mere curiosity, perhaps someone had an overstock. Titles in bookstores here can prove quite eclectic. However, I realized that this was not an aberration but a revelation of something deeper. Two items of information came to me that provided me some insight. One source came as the result of a man in Mumbai named Bal Thackeray (named after the British novelist). He was a right-wing political leader who professed some admiration for Hitler and his methods:  “If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.” His death (from natural causes) created quite a national news item, and it pretty much shut down Mumbai for a couple of days. This guy was not just any right-wing kook it turns out. 

However, my sense of disquiet grew when I read this article, which recounts the experience of a school teacher with a well-to-do set of students in Mumbai. Hitler proved far more popular then Gandhi. (Nine students admired Hitler; one admired Gandhi.) Students professed admiration for Hitler's oratory and "love of country". And some vehemently disparaged Gandhi. While I have criticisms of Gandhi, Gandhi (and any criticisms of him) are in a different moral universe than what we can say about Hitler. Hitler is about as close to unmitigated evil in a political leader as we can find. How could Indian youngsters profess any admiration for Hitler? Some Germans did (and perhaps a few stragglers do) profess such admiration, but I couldn't imagine anywhere in Germany or the U.S. where Hitler would receive any such favorable mention. 

The article is worth reading. From this I conclude that rampant, virulent nationalism lives here as it does in many other nations. Like a shingles virus, it waits quietly in the body politic until conditions are ripe to manifest itself and deploy its deadly DNA to run riot through society. Note well, per John Lukacs, nationalism is not patriotism. But few understand and appreciate the distinction. Let's hope here, and everywhere, a sane group of women and men  grasp the distinction patriotism and nationalism and keep us free from the malady that Hitler so horribly manifested.