[INDOLOGY] Mein Kampf in India/Popularity of Hitler Stories!

Fri Feb 14 07:22:57 UTC 2014

That was very fine! I have two additions to make.
When he first published his belles-lettres Ali started with Chacha Kahini
'Anecdotes of the uncle'. Ali was a democrat and also an anti-British great
nationalist patriot.  However, perhaps because of his anti-British
sentiments, initially Ali was not an opponent of Hitler. He himself admits
that it was later when a blue-eyed Kashmiri was taken for a Jew and
attacked by Hitler's musclemen that Ali understood the would be Nazis as an
evil. Ali said these much later long after coming back to India.
In the sixties he was writing again and commented on the Eichmann trial. He
cited quite a few facts pointing to Eichmann's crimes. He had visited
Germany more than once.
How Ali -- admired on both the Bengals for his sarcastic writings,
particularly in my University at Santiniketan where he lived for long --
viewed the British may be seen also in the Deshe Bideshe (In my land and
abroad), a unique document on the rise and fall of Amanulla and Bachchai
Sakao in the thirties. Here Ali does not hesitate to praise anti-British
Russians, both exiled intellectuals and Soviet soldiers!
Greetings
DB

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Dr. Debabrata Chakrabarti <
dchakra at hotmail.de> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I have been stirred by Dr. Stella Sandahl to say something about the
> popularity of Hitler in West Bengal, India. I remember very well that in
> the sixties a very learned writer of Bengal, a polyglot, who spent a
> considerable time studying in Europe, particularly in Germany, was writing
> a series for the Bengali literary magazine *Desh* and his writings were
> being admired on all hands. The writer was Syed Muztaba Ali, publishing a
> series of belle's letters on the Nazi violence in Europe, not so much like
> setting the grass aflame, but generating his tongue in cheek to shake the
> utmost depths of men's hearts with horror. The Europe of that time had not
> been able to steer clear of the ashes of the Second World War and passive
> watchers of the war, as we Indians were, we were moved to read Ali's
> numerous stories, which one did not write in a book of history. We read
> thus innumerable stories of Hitler's invasions into the other European
> countries, along with Ali's sweet and sour anecdotes; we learnt about
> different political and military strategies and tragedies, the condemned
> life of the Jews, the toothless life of a teenager called Anne Franck, who
> died in the Bergen-Belsen Camp in 1945, and we could more than ever take a
> look at numerous concentration camps of Europe with horror. I remember
> spending many a sleepless nights with the issues of the magazine.
>
> The inclusion of the series of writings gave a considerable hike to the
> sale of the magazine.
>
> During the last fifteen years I have tried to visit concentration camps in
> Germany, Czech Republic and Poland whenever I had the opportunity to attend
> seminars in the nearby places, though the experiences were nonetheless
> heart-breaking.
>
> Regards
>
> Debabrata Chakrabarti
>
>
>
>
>
> "This body is like a musical instrument; what you hear depends upon how
> you play it." - Anandamayi Ma
>
> "Inside every human being there exists a special heaven, whole and
> unbroken." - Paracelsus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> From: ssandahl at sympatico.ca
> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 15:54:35 -0500
> To: CoseruC at cofc.edu; INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Mein Kampf in India
>
> A friend sent me this distressing information: "Actually, in a survey of
> "strong" leaders conducted among Delhi University students some years ago,
> Hitler came out ahead of Gandhi."
> However, I wonder how much Delhi students actually know about Hitler.
>  Best
> Stella
>
> --
> Stella Sandahl
> ssandahl at sympatico.ca
>
>
>
> On 2014-02-12, at 4:42 PM, Coseru, Cristian wrote:
>
>  This is digressing from the main point of this thread, but let me just
> add that once he became aware of Hitler's ulterior motives (after the
> invasion of Russia), Bose jumped from the frying pan into the fire, so to
> speak, by turning to the Japanese for the same sort of help (while fully
> aware of Japan's own imperial ambitions in SE Asia).
>
>  Best,
> Christian
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Feb 12, 2014, at 4:14 PM, "Bijlert, V.A. van" <v.a.van.bijlert at vu.nl>
> wrote:
>
>   Here I have to object. Bose was not really an admirer of the darkest
> sides of Hitler and Bose was quite well aware of the intensely racist
> nature of national socialism. But Bose was an Indian nationalist and
> vehemently anti-British. Thus trying to get Hitler's help was based on the
> principle 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. Hitler, incidentally, saw
> nothing in Indian independence.
>
>  Victor van Bijlert
>
>
>
> Op 12 feb. 2014 om 20:09 heeft "Coseru, Cristian" <CoseruC at cofc.edu> het
> volgende geschreven:
>
>   And let's not forget also that "Netaji" Subhas Chandra Bose was also a
> great admirer of it (after all, he helped organize the Indian Legion in
> Berlin from Indian subjects that had been formerly enlisted by the British
> forces, and subsequently captured by the Axis powers in Africa; they sore
> allegiance to both Hitler and Bose).
>
>  Best,
> Christian
>
>
>  Christian Coseru
> Associate Professor of Philosophy
> Department of Philosophy
> College of Charleston
> 66 George Street
> Charleston, SC 29424
>
> Office:
> Phone: 843 953-1935
> Facsimile: 843 953-6388
> Email: coseruc at cofc.edu
> Web: http://coseruc.people.cofc.edu/
>
>
>  On Feb 12, 2014, at 1:14 PM, Stella Sandahl <ssandahl at sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>
>  About time to invoke it. But Golwalkar was a great admirer of Mein
> Kampf, so banning it might upset Hindu feelings. Who knows.
> Best
> Stella
>  --
> Professor Stella Sandahl
> Department of East Asian Studies
> 130 St. George St. room 14087
> Toronto, ON M5S 3H1
> ssandahl at sympatico.ca
> stella.sandahl at utoronto.ca
>
> Fax. (416) 978-5711
>
>
>
>  On 2014-02-12, at 11:18 AM, Matthew Kapstein wrote:
>
>  Of course, Hitler's Mein Kampf is readily available in almost any Indian
> bookstall.
> I imagine that the small Bene Israel community never mobilized itself
> to invoke Section 295-A.....
>
> Matthew Kapstein
> Directeur d'études,
> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
>
> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
> The University of Chicago
>   ------------------------------
>
>  _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://listinfo.indology.info&k=xJ26TAwb97wzIimyhzPQ1w%3D%3D%0a&r=IcQhLA%2Bss0kVeAHcng%2BNXg%3D%3D%0a&m=wYvF5RL4Uc%2B20mSfMeu%2ByqGi8BYjnUwhcthm/HbPhIM%3D%0a&s=a9c3deada7811b7f6a6e92257512b9f1a9d54acdf6b1cec96d177dc8f3cd59f7>
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://listinfo.indology.info/&k=xJ26TAwb97wzIimyhzPQ1w%3D%3D%0A&r=IcQhLA%2Bss0kVeAHcng%2BNXg%3D%3D%0A&m=wYvF5RL4Uc%2B20mSfMeu%2ByqGi8BYjnUwhcthm%2FHbPhIM%3D%0A&s=9745255971b487663acb6a86540205b9b90d441cf39119ce33d04edd9d8b40a9<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://listinfo.indology.info/&k=xJ26TAwb97wzIimyhzPQ1w%3D%3D%0a&r=IcQhLA%2Bss0kVeAHcng%2BNXg%3D%3D%0a&m=wYvF5RL4Uc%2B20mSfMeu%2ByqGi8BYjnUwhcthm/HbPhIM%3D%0a&s=9745255971b487663acb6a86540205b9b90d441cf39119ce33d04edd9d8b40a9>
>
>
>   _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://listinfo.indology.info&k=xJ26TAwb97wzIimyhzPQ1w%3D%3D%0a&r=IcQhLA%2Bss0kVeAHcng%2BNXg%3D%3D%0a&m=/yk1taHeC%2Bn0DQOt9/b0RtblzRQ2qsyj3aKh9RuRhlA%3D%0a&s=1deafbf198cfff5d83fa3e35ab3d9b05893b44465e43c1aa4b200fc5c44db4f5>
>
>   _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________ INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info http://listinfo.indology.info
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20140214/632dad7d/attachment.htm>