Swastika syndrome

Ask visiting Europeans the more disconcerting phenomenon they have encountered in India, and the responses would vary.

Ask visiting Europeans the more disconcerting phenomenon they have encountered in India, and the responses would vary. Some may talk about the cows on the streets causing traffic jams; others may recall the endless lines of sleeping bodies on the pavement of a city road. But a few may cite something less obvious: the swastika.

For Indians, this crooked cross 8212; albeit depicted in a slightly different way 8212; is a symbol of good fortune while in Europe it actually embodies hate, intolerance and the horrors that the Nazi regime. Any European who sees a swastika will consequently experience a sort of visceral reaction, mostly irrational and indefinable. Nevertheless, he will acknowledge that this twisted cross actually originated from India itself, and that the link with Nazism is only a product of cultural conditioning.

Yet doubts will certainly resurface anew after the visitor notices that Mein Kampf, Hitler8217;s autobiography, is openly sold in Indian book shops. 8220;We sell around 15 copies a month,8221; one prominent Delhi bookseller told me, casually adding that it was quite comparable to Nehru8217;s works. In Europe, the book is not banned but you will hardly find it in school libraries. Copies in the open market will often remain tucked away in some discreet corner of the shop.

Obviously, the subject does not have the same resonance in India. Indeed, while the Allied Forces were fighting against Hitler8217;s troops, the subcontinent8217;s attention was more focused on the struggle for India8217;s independence. In other words, the collective memory is less imprinted by the atrocities of the Holocaust than those of Partition. Only this can explain the unhappy move of a Mumbai entrepreneur to open last summer in Mumbai a restaurant called Hitler8217;s Cross. The owner, since he was unaware of how culturally loaded Nazi history is, could not have anticipated the outburst of anger that his publicity stunt had aroused.

This, finally, is just another illustration of how history remains such a sensitive subject.