Dear Dominik,

Thanks for this well-formulated and timely statement.

To facilitate sharing and add momentum a Twitter link may be useful as suggested by Jean-Luc Chevillard (#MLBDcontroversy).

On the other hand, it may not be very useful to go through the Times of India or the Hindu, as a topic related to Hitler's crimes against humanity cannot be expected to have any significant impact even on an educated Indian public (for background see the article link provided by Luis Gonzales-Reiman). I have noted the very easy and trivial use of the word "hitler" in various Indian languages where it seems to have become lexicalized in the sense of "severe person" (see also the occasional use of the term in well-known Bollywood films and the soap serial Hitler Didi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Didi).

Jan Houben

On 19 May 2014 11:37, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> wrote:

Yesterday I wrote to MLDB, protesting about their publication of Mein Kampf. My letter is open, and I've posted a copy to one of my blogs.

Dominik Wujastyk

On 15 May 2014 19:54, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> wrote:

I see from the April 2014 issue of the MLBD Newsletter that MLBD is bringing out an edition of Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitlar (sic). It nestles incongruously between Alonso on the Mahabharata and the Black on the Upanisads.

This was a shock! My immediate reaction was that I wish furiously to sever all links with MLBD. I have already written to Penguin Delhi, asking to withdraw my book from them because of their scandalous pulping of Doniger's book. Now MLDB is publishing "Hitlar." Has Indian publishing gone completely mad?

My second reaction was, it's not wrong to publish even Hitlar's writings, because how else can interested people find out how misguided he was, and how else can historians combat his ideas. Free speech and all that.

But my final conclusion is that this is indeed completely inappropriate because MLBD presents itself as an Indological publisher, and Mein Kampf isn't even remotely connected with serious Indology. Even participants in the "Indology under National Socialism" debate don't really need a new edition of Kampf, surely.

I shall therefore be writing to MLBD in protest in the strongest terms about this pubication. I urge all my colleagues to do the same. If someone wants to set up a petition, I'll gladly sign it.

Best,
Dominik Wujastyk

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