Hitler’s Cross
While doing some quick research for Nanowrimo, I stumbled upon an interesting piece of news that I somehow missed when it was current back in 2006.
In Mumbai, there was, for a very brief period of time, a restaurant named Hitler’s Cross with a swastika in the logo.
Why?
"Hitler is a catchy name. Everyone knows Hitler," he explained in an interview.
Yes… everyone knows Hitler in the West, too. But they, umm, don’t like him all that much. In India?
Newspaper surveys have found that significant numbers of Indian college students rate Hitler as an ideal model for an Indian leader. A 2002 survey by the Times of India, an English-language daily, noted that Hitler signified discipline, efficiency and nationalism to the students. Hitler also holds appeal for some Hindu nationalists who dream of a more assertive, conquering India cleansed of its Muslim population.
Hmm. Okay.
Then there is the swastika. Before it was Hitler's symbol, it belonged to ancient Hindu tradition. Many Indians believe that Hitler was endorsing their culture when he co-opted the symbol. So common is the perception that it prompted Deutsche Welle, Germany's international media outlet, to publish an essay last year entitled "The Indian View on Hitler - A Deep Misunderstanding."
"The fact that he used the term Aryan or the symbol of the Swastika does not mean that Hitler liked India," it wrote.
Glad for the clarification!
Sabhlok and a friend, Ajeesh Nambiar, said they had never learned much about Hitler's Germany. "We are not very strong in history," Nambiar said. "Hitler has never come to India, so we don't know about him."
When asked how many Jews he thought were killed in the Holocaust, he said 600. Sabhlok revised it upward: 100,000.
So the real point of this isn’t to poke fun at the Indians or criticize them for not knowing what we consider to be crucial bits of modern history. Having grown up in the West and seeing “Schindler’s List” and “Life is Beautiful,” reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Night in school, etc., it seems inconceivable outside an outrageous ignorance, complete insensitivity, or a racist motivation that people would be think that “Hitler’s Cross” would be a good name for a restaurant.
But then I remember.
I remember how little I knew about the Nanking Massacre until I saw City of Life and Death at SIFF. Being Chinese, I did have some idea, but I didn’t know about the scale and brutality of the atrocities committed. The Americans I watched the movie with knew nothing beforehand. It’s just not really covered in American schools.
I remember how little I knew about the Killing Fields in Cambodia. Even after accounts from friends who traveled to Cambodia and visited the site, even after watching a play about Cambodian immigrants with references back to the Khmer Rouge, I still don’t know that much about that bloody period in Cambodian history.
I’m slowly working through Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl, which made a reference to a period of time when Indira Gandhi was in office. Having very little knowledge of Indian history, my impression of Indira Gandhi (undoubtedly because of the other Gandhi) is that she’s a nice woman who was the Indian Prime Minister for awhile. Apparently, one of the nice things she did while in office was instituting a policy of compulsory sterilization that resulted in over 8 million sterilizations.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for my ignorance and misperceptions, I’m sure. It’s good to have this sort of reminder every once in awhile. To understand that when we get skim our knowledge of things from the surfaces of people’s uneducated perceptions and offhand remarks, our understanding can be drastically skewed or completely absent. This is particularly important in an age where people expect their news to be entertainment, anyone can post a seemingly-informed blog article on the internet, and in some ways we’re more sheltered from dissenting opinions than ever.
(Quotes are from the article on New York Times)