On the Indian Readers of Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Abstract

Every once in a while a newsworthy “controversy” appears which has to do with how Adolf Hitler and Nazism feature in Indian political and cultural discourses. Since 2000, these have included the making of the Bombay film Dear Friend Hitler (2011, dir. Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, later renamed Gandhi to Hitler); Gujarat Chief Minister (Prime Minister of India from 2014) Narendra Modi being compared to Hitler (or Goebbels) after the 2002 Gujarat riots, and particularly by various politicians in 2011–2012; Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray’s admiration for Hitler (2008 onwards), reminiscent of his uncle Bal Thackeray, founder of the Shiv Sena; social science Class X textbooks published by the Gujarat State Board of Schools in 2003–2004 giving a positive spin to Hitler’s leadership and the Nazi regime; and protests in 2006 about a Mumbai restaurant called “Hitler’s Cross” and in 2012 about a fashion boutique in Ahmedabad called “Hitler”. Threaded around reportage of these is a consistent strand which has reappeared regularly: the popularity of Hitler and of his autobiography and manifesto Mein Kampf in India. The circulation and sales of Mein Kampf (first published 1925/1926) in India has constantly seemed noteworthy, since it is well known that the book clearly portended the genocidal programme of the Nazi regime — the systematic murder of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and other (particularly Eastern European and Russian) civilians from the late 1930s to 1945.