Amit Chaudhuri on Kolkata’s Obsession with Adolf Hitler, and What it Could Mean
In early 2014 when a number of newspapers across the globe started reporting the sudden surge in sales of a certain e-book we were left red-faced. The book was Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Busy speculating the reasons behind this sudden love for the controversial dictator, we sought refuge in “curiosity”, that open-ended word capable of hiding myriad sentiments, someone gave us the optimistic “People need to understand that if we do not learn from people like this, then we will fall into their traps again”, and then we began heavily citing journalist Chris Faraone’s essay and believed we have finally finally found the answer. Faraone writing in the Vocativ in January 2014 stated that the book was “following a similar trend to that of smut and romance novels”, and because we are talking about e-books and not physical copies he sold us hope saying, “People might not have wanted to buy Mein Kampf at Borders or have it delivered to their home or displayed on their living room bookshelf, let alone get spotted reading it on a subway, but judging by hundreds of customer comments online, readers like that digital copies can be quietly perused then dropped into a folder or deleted.”
This essentially follows from the argument that these people who resort to the perverse pleasure of reading Hitler in private in the virtual outer space of solitude, would not do the same in the sacred inner space of bookshops under the gaze of the familiar, expected and valued gaze of fellow readers. Thus the virtual reading space becomes the bazaaar where perversions are overlooked.
When writer Amit Chaudhuri expressed his surprise at Mein Kampf’s popularity in Kolkata where it is never found in bookshops and always at the pavements outside, he was perhaps coming from the same direction as Faraone. Hitler, who despite some support that he enjoys in some quarters of India, is still pretty much a taboo topic that while one can indulge in won’t find it easy to brandish and champion. The sympathizers of the man who choreographed the holocaust are forced to adopt stealthier means for their hero promotion. Not even the worst of the cultural supremacists find it easy to say “Heil Hitler” in public.
In this scenario, finding Hitler out on the streets in a communist state, at the time of writing the essay “The Truth About Hitler”, Chaudhuri’s surprise is understandable. The street, as Chaudhuri notes, “where the careers of most workers of the National Socialist Party began”.
But as he goes on to explore with reference to his Communist uncle who preserved a copy of Capital that looked forever new, the Bengal’s relationship with Hitler isn’t of simple love and hate.
This hatred for the colonial power, Bose and similar bindings remind me of China, that calls itself a Communist country, where Hitler rather quixotically has become a hero. There are myths about Hitler being adopted by a Chinese family during his poverty-stricken youth and how despite his support for Japan, he was always sympathetic for the Chinese cause — like certainly section in India would tell you about Hitler’s dream of a shining and independent India. But above all what neutralizes the German dictator’s image the most is that “at least he was honest”, or as once some history textbooks in India would have told you: a nationalist, an able administrator and one who cared for the country’s development.
So when Chaudhuri goes out to know from the street vendors, many of them who are aware of the subject they are selling offer statements that bring back memories that find parallels in India’s treatment of its own politicians who it does not necessary admire.
It seems, as Chaudhuri tells us, the Indian political life is far more “elastic and accommodating” compared to the West, where once your political life is over it is over. But in India there’s always a chance for comeback. The fragile public memory forgives and forgets the past like it never existed.
Writing in 2005, he ends his essay speculating Narendra Modi’s eventual rise to the position of the prime minister, a prediction then and a present now where the Godhra riots gradually fade in the background. Like the public doesn’t like lifelong romances, its enmities too are short-lived, when it knows and till it knows there’s dividend in return of its loyalty.
Buy Amit Chaudhuri’s Telling Tales: Selected Writing, 1993–2013 from here