http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/hitler-s-strange-afterlife-in-india.html
This article is a rebuttal of the article referenced above. I found the premise of the article, especially given its audience, highly disturbing.
The article begins thus:
"Hated and mocked in much of the world, the Nazi leader has developed a strange following among schoolchildren and readers of Mein Kampf in India. Dilip D’Souza on how political leader Bal Thackeray influenced Indians to admire Hitler and despise Gandhi."
Does any Indian see what's wrong with this statement? Yes, this is not something any upper middle class child (or for that matter any Indian child) is going to be familiar with. Further down in his article, the author Dilip D'Souza tells us that his French teacher wife stumbled upon this popularity/following among schoolchildren of Hitler when she asked the class who they admired. Given that there is no systematic brainwashing of children in Indian schools anywhere (that I know of), there could be any number of reasons this might have been the majority answer from her class - perhaps Hitler was fresh in memory from a recent History class?
My first objection to D'Souza's article is the generalization he has made from his wife's single observation. The second is that, after assuming that these children are developing Nazi tendencies (or at least that they are admiring the evil Hitler through some external influence brainwashing them), he goes on to infer that the external influence was Bal Thackeray, a Marathi/Hindu nationalist party leader based in Mumbai.
The Bal Thackeray quotation used in his article is from an interview to Time magazine during the 1992-93 Mumbai riots:
“There is nothing wrong,” he said then, “if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.”
My third objection to D'Souza's article is that while a adult Indian audience might be aware of the context surrounding the 1993 riots in Mumbai, which has been well documented as having started by Muslim criminal elements, a foreign audience is unlikely to know that Bal thackeray's statement was a reaction to this unrest. While I have no interest in defending Bal Thackeray's incitement of violence (especially comparison to Jews), singling him out for a statement made in the heat of the matter was unnecessary and irresponsible. D'Souza also appears to be selecting particular episodes from the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, to provide incorrect statistics of Muslims being the majority of those killed in the violence.
Bal Thackeray, his Shiv Sena party, and its offshoots such as the MNS are all nationalistic parties with an additional sensitivity towards "immigration", as it were, to Mumbai from other parts of India. Their opposition to this phenomenon (movement and taking residence anywhere within India, except Jammu and Kashmir, is unrestricted) and the methods they employ do not have any support from outside their own loyalist circles. If any, it is the upper middle class and mostly liberal urban elite in India is most repulsed by parties such as the Shiv Sena, at least based on media reporting of their activities and policies, whether completely true or not. So, I don't know where D'Souza's is able to draw his conclusions regarding upper middle class children's Nazi-leaning tendencies from.
Lastly, it important to understand why or how (teenage) children come to admire things. In high school, from my own experience and what I can remember of my thought process, children look up to power and influence and such as important things to look up to. They end up becoming fans of the top-ranked cricketer, the top-ranked tennis player, the most popular film star, the most notable politician, etc. - long before they even understand that a more elegant batsman is what they will go on to like during their adulthood, or that they like an off-beat film star more than the matinee idol, or that their favourite politician turned out to be a scoundrel and that their political leanings lay elsewhere.
In high school, so much is taught in History lessons, about Muslims invasions of India, about Muslims and Hindus fighting together to drive out the British, the partition of India, and so on, that what remains in childrens' heads is the violence, not necessarily the significant of the events. To illustrate this, two years ago, a bunch of my friends and I got together to celebrate Independence Day. The topic of the Khilafat Movement came up, the entire group insisted that this was just like the other freedom movements such as the Quit India Movement or Dandi March. No one realized that this was actually in protest of the Khilafa (Ottoman empire) being dethroned at the end of WWI. It takes adulthood to clarify the stories read to actually make sense of what happened, and where one's sympathies might lie.
D'Souza might be able to better serve readers if he was able to focus not just on the perceived oppression of the minorities in India by the Hindu majority. It is important to note that there are language, regional, caste, religion, and class differences that are all equally critical in a country such as India. No one factor utterly dominates any other.
Good journalism starts with taking no sides, and trying to see the story impartially, Mr. D'Souza.
And by the way, it is high time our History text books taught our children about other freedom fighters, without merely picking Gandhi as the lone saviour. Gandhi's blunders as a politician are to be seen without reverence, such as his initial support of the religious-driven Khilafat Movement. Subhas Chandra Bose did something similar, by trying to draft an alliance with the Nazis to drive out the colonial British from India. Bose and VD Savarkar are but two examples of brave heroes from a vast constellation of freedom fighters who endured much more than Gandhi might have. If your wife's survey threw up too many 'J'admire Gandhi's, I'd be concerned. We might be teaching our children to not think critically, and that one man won us independence, and that non-violence was the only reason the mighty British left in 1947. I bet none of your wife's students had any clue what economical state the British were in post-WWII. So, let's start with looking at history objectively, and stop indoctrinating our children on who they should see as heroes. Tell them the stories as they were, and get off the majority-minority horse you rode in on.
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| Subhas Chandra Bose meeting Adolf Hitler Image courtesy: assassinationadolfhitler.blogspot.com |
The article begins thus:
"Hated and mocked in much of the world, the Nazi leader has developed a strange following among schoolchildren and readers of Mein Kampf in India. Dilip D’Souza on how political leader Bal Thackeray influenced Indians to admire Hitler and despise Gandhi."
Does any Indian see what's wrong with this statement? Yes, this is not something any upper middle class child (or for that matter any Indian child) is going to be familiar with. Further down in his article, the author Dilip D'Souza tells us that his French teacher wife stumbled upon this popularity/following among schoolchildren of Hitler when she asked the class who they admired. Given that there is no systematic brainwashing of children in Indian schools anywhere (that I know of), there could be any number of reasons this might have been the majority answer from her class - perhaps Hitler was fresh in memory from a recent History class?
My first objection to D'Souza's article is the generalization he has made from his wife's single observation. The second is that, after assuming that these children are developing Nazi tendencies (or at least that they are admiring the evil Hitler through some external influence brainwashing them), he goes on to infer that the external influence was Bal Thackeray, a Marathi/Hindu nationalist party leader based in Mumbai.
The Bal Thackeray quotation used in his article is from an interview to Time magazine during the 1992-93 Mumbai riots:
“There is nothing wrong,” he said then, “if [Indian] Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.”
My third objection to D'Souza's article is that while a adult Indian audience might be aware of the context surrounding the 1993 riots in Mumbai, which has been well documented as having started by Muslim criminal elements, a foreign audience is unlikely to know that Bal thackeray's statement was a reaction to this unrest. While I have no interest in defending Bal Thackeray's incitement of violence (especially comparison to Jews), singling him out for a statement made in the heat of the matter was unnecessary and irresponsible. D'Souza also appears to be selecting particular episodes from the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, to provide incorrect statistics of Muslims being the majority of those killed in the violence.
Bal Thackeray, his Shiv Sena party, and its offshoots such as the MNS are all nationalistic parties with an additional sensitivity towards "immigration", as it were, to Mumbai from other parts of India. Their opposition to this phenomenon (movement and taking residence anywhere within India, except Jammu and Kashmir, is unrestricted) and the methods they employ do not have any support from outside their own loyalist circles. If any, it is the upper middle class and mostly liberal urban elite in India is most repulsed by parties such as the Shiv Sena, at least based on media reporting of their activities and policies, whether completely true or not. So, I don't know where D'Souza's is able to draw his conclusions regarding upper middle class children's Nazi-leaning tendencies from.
Lastly, it important to understand why or how (teenage) children come to admire things. In high school, from my own experience and what I can remember of my thought process, children look up to power and influence and such as important things to look up to. They end up becoming fans of the top-ranked cricketer, the top-ranked tennis player, the most popular film star, the most notable politician, etc. - long before they even understand that a more elegant batsman is what they will go on to like during their adulthood, or that they like an off-beat film star more than the matinee idol, or that their favourite politician turned out to be a scoundrel and that their political leanings lay elsewhere.
In high school, so much is taught in History lessons, about Muslims invasions of India, about Muslims and Hindus fighting together to drive out the British, the partition of India, and so on, that what remains in childrens' heads is the violence, not necessarily the significant of the events. To illustrate this, two years ago, a bunch of my friends and I got together to celebrate Independence Day. The topic of the Khilafat Movement came up, the entire group insisted that this was just like the other freedom movements such as the Quit India Movement or Dandi March. No one realized that this was actually in protest of the Khilafa (Ottoman empire) being dethroned at the end of WWI. It takes adulthood to clarify the stories read to actually make sense of what happened, and where one's sympathies might lie.
D'Souza might be able to better serve readers if he was able to focus not just on the perceived oppression of the minorities in India by the Hindu majority. It is important to note that there are language, regional, caste, religion, and class differences that are all equally critical in a country such as India. No one factor utterly dominates any other.
Good journalism starts with taking no sides, and trying to see the story impartially, Mr. D'Souza.
And by the way, it is high time our History text books taught our children about other freedom fighters, without merely picking Gandhi as the lone saviour. Gandhi's blunders as a politician are to be seen without reverence, such as his initial support of the religious-driven Khilafat Movement. Subhas Chandra Bose did something similar, by trying to draft an alliance with the Nazis to drive out the colonial British from India. Bose and VD Savarkar are but two examples of brave heroes from a vast constellation of freedom fighters who endured much more than Gandhi might have. If your wife's survey threw up too many 'J'admire Gandhi's, I'd be concerned. We might be teaching our children to not think critically, and that one man won us independence, and that non-violence was the only reason the mighty British left in 1947. I bet none of your wife's students had any clue what economical state the British were in post-WWII. So, let's start with looking at history objectively, and stop indoctrinating our children on who they should see as heroes. Tell them the stories as they were, and get off the majority-minority horse you rode in on.
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