SMOKERS’ CORNER: EULOGISING NAZI GERMANY IN SOUTH ASIA
Often one comes across a statement made by a Pakistani or an Indian politician, praising the former German Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s regime (1933-1945) was responsible for the systematic state-sanctioned murder of millions of people considered to be of the ‘inferior race.’ So it is odd to hear praise for him coming from folk who too would have been sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz along with men, women and children of the so-called ‘non-Aryan races.’
The phenomenon of some South Asians romanticising Hitler could be the result of the region’s recent shift to the populist right, along with various other regions of the world. But there are many other possibilities.
The idealisation of Hitler among some sections in India and Pakistan could also be due to the residual impact of a clever propaganda campaign that the Nazis unleashed upon certain segments of India’s Hindu and Muslim polities in the 1930s. This fact has been largely forgotten by mainstream history. However, even a brief recap of this can aid in better understanding the ironic spectacle of a ‘brown’ Muslim or a Hindu fawning over a mass murderer, who would have thrown them in one of his many death camps at the drop of a hat.
In his essay for the May/June 2000 issue of the academic journal, Social Scientist, Eugene J. D’Souza writes that Nazi German propaganda made its way into India when mainstream Hindu and Muslim leadership in the region had become disoriented after the gradual collapse of two major anti-British movements in the 1920s: the Khilafat Movement and the ‘Non-cooperation Movement’.
D’Souza writes this is when German business interests in the region were first activated by Nazi Germany to contact the more radical elements within the Hindu and Muslim political, social and media outlets. The campaign in this regard began from Bengal, where ‘communal’ and ‘revolutionary’ anti-British sentiment was the strongest. To Nazi Germany, the British were enemies, even before the start of the Second World War.
The curious case of ‘brown’ folks fawning over Hitler and his policies
Nazi agents (largely recruited from German businesses in India) preyed on the fears of Bengal’s landed and business elites, telling them that their lands and businesses were under threat due to the ‘socialist’ bent of the Indian National Congress (INC). Hitler’s notorious biography, Mein Kampf was then translated into various languages of India — including Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. These translations were distributed free of cost, especially among the editors and staff of various Hindi and Urdu newspapers.
D’Souza writes that Nazi agents then began to infiltrate various Muslim and Hindu social and cultural organisations. The September 8, 1939 issue of the English daily The Times of India quoted Jewish and socialist refugees from Germany in India as saying that Indian employees working in German companies were being used to spy on the refugees.
Apart from utilising the ‘services’ of India-based German businesses, Nazi Germany also sent agents to India disguised as technicians, tourists, salesmen, musicians and photographers. According to D’Souza, German businesses would frequently give advertisements to Indian newspapers that were willing to facilitate Nazi propaganda.
Even though the main intention of Nazi Germany was to ferment unrest in India against the British colonialists, its plans in this context never looked to unite the anti-British Hindu and Muslim segments. Maybe the Germans had noted the volatility of such a move. Hindus and Muslims had collaborated with each other against the British during the Khilafat and Non-cooperation movements; but both the movements had eventually mutated into becoming communal, giving the British the space to crush them.