In Pakistan, jihadists are folk heroes. And so is Adolf Hitler, for largely the same reasons: genocidal Jew-hatred, militarism, etc. Yet the execrable libelblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs had the mendacious temerity to smear anti-jihadists as neo-Nazis. "The Führer Cult: Germans Cringe at Hitler's Popularity in Pakistan," by Hasnain Kazim in Spiegel, March 17 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe.Pakistan is the opposite of Germany. The mountains are in the north, the sea is in the south, the economic problems are in the west and the east is doing well. It's not hard for a German living in Pakistan to get used to these differences, but one contrast is hard to stomach: Most people like Hitler.
I was recently at the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn't resort to electric clippers. All he has is creaky pair of scissors, a comb, an aerosol with water. He did a neat job but I wasn't entirely happy.
I said: "I look like Hitler."
He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: "Yes, yes, very nice." [...]
Sometimes it's better to keep quiet about one's German origins. It's embarrassing because people here think they're doing you a favor by expressing their admiration for the Nazi leader. I suspect most Indians and Pakistanis have no idea what this man did. They see him as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans.
More likely, they love him because he murdered Jews, the worst enemies of the Muslims (cf. Qur'an 5:82).
In the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan but right across from Iran to northern Africa, anti-Semitic sentiment of course plays a role. Conversations with German visitors rapidly turn to the injustice being suffered by the Palestinians who were robbed of their land. [...]A few days ago a white Mercedes built in the 1970s was driving ahead of me in the center of Islamabad carrying a family of seven. On the back was a sticker bearing a black swastika in a white circle. Underneath it read: "I like Nazi." [...]
English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.
Once my wife and I visited the cafe in the beautiful Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. It has a garden lined with palms, excellent tea and friendly waiters in uniforms that recall the colonial era. A young man served us. The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.
The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.
Mohammed and Muslims made Hitler and Nazis look mild by comparison.
We've always said if you wear a "Hitler was Great" t-shirt anywhere in the Muslim world, one would be treated like royalty - receiving free food/shelter/gifts, etc.
Hitler vs. Mohammed - Side by side comparisons
Hasnain Kazim wrote, "They see him [Hitler] as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans."
What an unbelievable comment. By that logic, they should love Kaiser Wilhelm II as well!
English editions of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" can be found in bookshops even in the most remote parts of India. And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader.
The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.
The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf.
It seems unlikely that the non-Muslims in India would revere Hitler. I would bet that the Indians who do are Muslim. Too bad the author of the article, likely a Muslim himself from his name, does not elaborate.
It helps when lovers have something in common.
Explanation.Blissful ignorance.
No, it's not just Muslims relying on the usual anti-Semitic Islam. Look into the nature of Nazi-ism and see it as an occultist/pagan remake of the universal, and there you will see a poligion close to Islam; but it's not the same. Hindus, no friends of Islam, are, sometimes, Nazi-ists all of their own accord. And if it's not an exact fit, neither is the so-called New Age paganism of our Left dhimmi fascism. But the origins, the and the genealogy, is the same in all fascisms. For some brief introduction to Hindu Nazi-ism, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi
Consider the source.
In fact, there seem to be neo-Nazi organizations all over the world. It is a mystery why the figure of Hitler is so attractive to extreme nationalists, as if the various peoples of the world don't have their own historical figures to turn into symbols.
Hitler's significance is not that he may have been a nationalist or an extraordinary leader, but that he was the most extreme antisemite and one of the cruelest mass murderers in world history. Evidently there is something in this which is of universal appeal.
I suppose the situation is slightly more complicated in India because of the Indian nationalist hero, Subhas Chandra Bose throwing in his lot with the axis powers. Before eventually founding the Indian National Army, in co-operation with the Japanese, he had spent some time hanging around in Berlin. Most Indians, I imagine would justify this on the grounds of Realpolitick rather than out of any sympathy for fascism. The swastika, however, is not the scary symbol in Hindu culture that it is in ours. Perhaps the best way to persuade Pakistanis not to approve of the it, is to point out that it is a symbol widely used in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Everyone, please understand that the following comes from someone who sees Israel as a very legitimate nation and who believes to the bottom of his soul that Adolf Hitler was a fiend of Hell loosed on earth.
These Asian (I'm thinking of the non-Pakistani thoughts mentioned) are a case of how cross-cultural communication, while possible, can get pretty garbled.
I am not surprised at the news and comments on this thread. A lot of Asian nationalists had and even have a sometimes sneaky, sometimes open admiration for Hitler. I have heard Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait speak well of him. In the 1960's, Viet Nam's Nguyen Cao Ky shocked his American allies by speaking well of Hitler. Don't forget Subhas Chandra Bhose, who was as Hindu as they come. Hitler is often seen as a man who rallied a deeply humiliated nation to stand up to its oppressors. His racism is often not completely understood in Asia. Often, it appears to Asians as a European complement to Asia's own sense of pride in its antiquity.
Also, by selling Israel as the refuge for the survivors of Hitler's atrocities rather than as the majority-Mizrahi nation that it is, Israel's friends seem to be saying, at least to a lot of Asia, that European colonialism of non-European lands is still a legitimate enterprise. To many Asians, the Jews are as obscure a tribe as the Zhuang of Guangxi and the Yi of Yunnan are to us--even though both of these Chinese minorities are more numerous than the Tibetans.
Asians sometime suppose that Hitler's persecution of that exotic little Western tribe was little more than the imposition of petty humiliations to which any colonized people might be subject. If, for example, we were to bring up the imposition of the magen David bearing the legend "Jude" as an example of anti-Jewish persecution, many might wonder why the fuss, since Asians are accustomed to minorities wearing their ethnic markers anyway--and distinctive dress for Dhimmi is a fine old tradition if those Asians are Muslim. There are nationalistic Han Chinese, for example, old enough to remember grandfathers who celebrated the cutting off of the queue as ridding themselves of an imposition forced on China by an at least semi-alien Manchu conquering race.
It is often a very large revelation to people from "East of Suez" that the Shoah was a premeditated program of mass murder carried out with all the administrative and technological skill that an advanced state could muster. Hence, when they hear of the survivors of Hitler's persecution building a state in the Middle East, their reaction is, "Why couldn't those people just be glad they've been rescued, restored to citizenship, and go back to their normal lives?"--without much recognition that the normal lives of "those people"--including friends, families, communities, status, and all--were swept away.
In fairness, such people grow thoughtful when exposed to the occasional Western friend who lost kin in the Shoah. But, what should the mass of their countrymen think when they are as incurious about exotic Western minorities as the average resident of the Missouri Ozarks is about the Uighur or the Zhuang, and who have not been told about the Shoah in the little school history they had? Further, what if you were raised in a China where Israel was, and to some extent still is, demonized as a "Neo-colonialist running dog of American imperial hegemony", and where "Poles", "Soviet citizens" and suchlike were massacred during WWII--if Hitler's atrocities are mentioned at all in your history books? And, re Hindu India, what should you feel when your own country is bothered by uppity minorities in Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland who insist on either separation or a full citizenship that does not first go through the Untouchable Caste stage?
Also, India's feelings--whether Muslim or Hindu--are very, very complex. India had (and maybe still has) a large Brittanophile element in its military class; but most of the rest of the country, especially the political class, was educated to see perfidious Albion as the impoverisher and rapist of Mai Hind. Hence, someone who gave the Pukka Sahibs a run for their money can't be all bad--especially if he fought for the glory of sacred Aryan Blood!
We err if we suppose that Asian peoples in their homelands necessarily identify with the sufferings of the Jews in the nominally Christian Europe of the past--or with the sufferings of blacks in America--and immediately cheer the West's sackcloth-and-ashes repentence from its former racism. Many Asian peoples have a strong sense of security in their own ethnic and cultural identities, to say nothing of a strong sense of pride in who they are. The racism of the British, Dutch, French, or American colonial master of yesteryear was bad, to be sure--but that's only because it was directed against "We, the people of ________, who are naturally superior to those smelly, Redhair Barbarians!" Worse yet, the proverbial "little knowledge" of Occidentalia that trickles down in Asia can react to Alex Haley's _Roots_ with a smug, "well, the White people had a culture to protect". And, worst of all, it can morph into an attitude Ze'ev Suffott found among Chinese Communists that blamed Jewish "foreign friends" for the fanaticism that eclipsed the "humanity" of Chinese Communism (as if Mao Zeodong's real name was Sigmund Murmeltier and he was born in Austria-Hungary rather than Hunan!)
Please take this blurb as being at the same time both sympathetic and critical towards my Asian kinsmen. While I abhor PeeCee cultural relativism, I still believe that there's much to be said for mutual understanding between different cultures (Paul said there's neither Jew nor Greek in Christ). But, after a bit of time in Asia and knowledge of a few of its religions and languages, I think I understand, even if I cannot approve, why an Indian might name his son Adolf and expect a child of Federal Germany to feel kinship because of it.
"With the American invasion of Iraq and continued U.S. aggression against Muslims, I could not reconcile between living in the U.S and being a Muslim, and I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself just as it is binding on every other Muslim," he says in the recording that runs more than 12 minutes.
I think he has it backwards. It seems to me that Islam has declared war on the civilized world. Unfortunately, most of the world has not accepted the notion.
It's awful, but in some cases -- not those of Muslims, especially Arab Muslims, cheerfully congratulating German backpackers on the great job they did with the Jews -- it may also be based, as a poster above suggests, partly on great ignorance and misunderstanding. In Kerala State, where there are plenty of Communists, one fashioinable first name used to be "Stalin." I don't think the parents meant it as an endorsement of Vorkyta and Magadan, and the means used to build the White Sea Canal.
Errata Sheet:
For "Vorkyta"
Read "Vorkuta"
I wrongly retained the Russian "y" in English; the correct transliteration would yield "u." My visual overwhelmed my aural apprehension. Sorry. I'm sure I'll make that mistake again.
Winston Churchill on Page 50 of 'From War To War', the first part of the first volume of his six-part 'Second World War' proclaimed Hitler's Mein Kampf to be:
"...the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message."
Wilders referenced this recently in his speech to the British parliament.
Is it really any surprise why Hitler is so beloved in the Islamic world? Of course not. But that won't stop imbeciles screeching that the problem is all about Israel "occupying" "Palestinian" land.
The day the world knows the Koran and what Islam is really all about, the end of Islam will come.
HEADS UP
The bolded paragraph above no longer appears on the Der Spiegel website.
Cleanup job?
India got it's independance from Britian after the ww2. During the war many indian, muslims and hindus saw hitler as someone who was fighting against Britian. This was the case of "whoever is the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The good feeling towards Hitler has lasted through all these years, but generally the better eductated indian abhor this man for his many crimes against humanity. unfortuntly the muslims still sees him as someone they can admire. after all Hitler was very much like their fav prophet, muhammed.
Yes in India stalin is a popular name, the son of the Tamilnadu chief minister is stalin. Its just a name and doesnt carry any kind of praise for the character. But the muslim praise for hitler is praising him for the slaughter of jews. The most common name of muslims is mohammad and he is the ideal perfect human being to be followed, they do follow him to the hilt. The koran and mein kampf complement each other for the hate they spew on jews. Islam is nothing but a bigger and monstrous form of Nazism.
Look, there is a govenment offical in Egypt named Hitler Tantawi.
The city of Tanta is supposedly where Hitler’s mother was born. Believe it or not!
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/598/eg3.htm
The Hitler restaurant in Mumbai.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5275866.stm
Thailand asks the question - if Hitler had eaten “X” brand potato chips would he have been “ a fun loving likeable character”?
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=19980602&id=WHAaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=di4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5524,1837038
Mein Kampf is a best seller in Turkey.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/03/turkey-shrugs-off-success-of-hitlers-mein-kampf.html
Same planet, different world.
I'll raise again my question of the RSS. They seem to be anti-Christian nationalists who violently attack Christians; but they also, I believe, have even deeper concerns against Islam. While I can't sympathize with the former concern, the latter appeals to me. Can we find common cause with the RSS or are they too myopic and generally outside our capacity to deal with them? I'm under the impression they have some good relations with Israel, but I fear they too might be "hiterian" regarding Christians.
Kepha?
I don't know about the pakistan part but the india bits of this article are supeficial and misguiding,let me make it clear there is no "Hitler was right" or any other such sentiment in india,a non serious reading of this article can lead to major misconceptions,here are some elaborations:
"It's embarrassing because people here think they're doing you a favor by expressing their admiration for the Nazi leader. I suspect most Indians and Pakistanis have no idea what this man did."
They don't, 45 percent of the indian population is illiterate,for the rest,from kindergarten to high school no holocaust or nazi history is taught,and also hitler being the miserable loser in the ww ii fails to garner admiration in the war history part also.
Western historians like Koenraad elst and Francais Gautier and some local ones like Sitaram Goel and arun Shourie have criticized history teaching in india, particular the benevolent portrayal of the moghul era despots,in India history teaching starts from the ancient and jumps straight to the colonial(british raj) era with shabby attempts to cover up muslim atrocities in between and create false instances of historic unity.For starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negationism_in_India_-_Concealing_the_Record_of_Islam
The problem with this approach is that the only ones left to fill the villain slot in the entire drama are the british.
and therefore
"They see him as the bold Führer who took on the British and Americans."
The moment the perenially amnesiac hindus get a clue of their own past sufferings so many things would change.
"And Indian schoolbooks have been known to celebrate Hitler as a great leader."
The above mentioned case is a 2005 scandal in which tenth standard school books in the western indian state of Gujarat were withdrawn after protests by the israeli embassy for praising nazi era economic policies and not mentioning the holocaust,the epicenter of the case was this quote from one such schoolbook from the chapter "Internal achievements of Nazism":
"Hitler adopted a new economic policy and brought prosperity to Germany. He made untiring efforts to make Germany self reliant within one decade".
Those still in doubt are suggested this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_India
and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Israeli_relations
Also the biggest contradiction in indian politics is that all the far right and "hindu nationalist" forces are extremely and unequivocally pro israel,case in point: BJP
I think the notorious God Bless Hitler burka bimbo photo was taken in Islamabad.
Mein Kampf is popular all over the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan. If Churchill called it the Koran of the fascists, then one might conversely say that the Koran is the Mein Kampf of the Islamofascists. Thus its appeal amongst Muslims would naturally be universal.
I think the fascination for Hitler amongst non-Muslim Asians, Indians in particular, is mostly æsthetic. The paraphernalia, the chthonic mythos, the Wagner must evoke images from the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. I agree with Kepha, that many of those who admire Hitler are unaware of his true evil. Like kids the world over who discover the swastika -- they toy with it without knowing its full significance.
But the admiration for Hitler by Muslims is of course far more than mere æsthetics. For them it's the secular counterpart to the jihadis' call to arms and their imam's malevolent fatwa. That Mein Kampf is perhaps the best-selling Western book in the Muslim world (except maybe The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) should say enough about the mindset from which Islam springs, as well as that of its left-wing apologists.
Maybe the RSS and groups like it show that pride, hatred, and all other sins are a human problem, not just ones of certain classes and groups.
Also, journalists and historians sometimes sell their audiences bills of goods rather than real history. The fanaticism of the Shiv Sena, parts of the BJP and similar groups should stand as a reminder that Hinduism isn't necessarily the tolerant, all-embracing creed of Gandhi and certain Western "Hinduphiles"; just as the "Myth of Andaluz" is, well, a myth. People are people, and all of them descend from fallen Adam the First, who wished to be a god for himself, and bought for himself and his posterity the miseries of this life, death itself, and the pains of Hell forever.
Most Hindus who admire Hitler may do so for his political skills, maybe for his military victories etc. but probably no nothing of the genocide and would probably, in all honesty, recoil at the knowledge in disgust. Also, Nazi's use of the Hindu Swastika and connotations with the word Aryan (both Sanskrit words still used widely in India) may also lull many Hindus into believing that this fellow can't be all that bad after all.
Most history books in India gloss over the nasty bits. They even don't get to learn about their own slavery and genocide under the mugals and are encouraged to revere this period of muslim rule over them. Places where muslims have erected edifices glorifying massacre of Hindus have become tourist sites and names of despotic emperors are now given to popular thoroughfares!
There was a case recently in Mumbai when a restaurant owner had named it "Hitler's Cross". These are nothing but ignorant people with no malice aforethought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Cafe
On the other hand, most muslims in both India and pakistan probably know full well about Hitler's anti-Semitism and admire him because of it.
Very justifiably, the author's and Robert Spencer's roping in of all "South Asians" as admirers of Hitler, has invited lots of comments. Let me add my two bits also.
Yes, there was some sympathy for Hitler before and during WWII, but only because, as someone put it in the comments - he gave pakka sahibs a run for their money. If a tribe has been telling us that we are a genetically inferior people unworthy of basic dignities, one can hardly blame us for hating such racists and admiring the leader who mauled the tribe.
How many British / Americans will desist from admiring Churchill because he was overtly racist and considered all colored people worthy of subjugation by "noble races". The residue of "admiration" for Hitler that you see in Indian Hindus today is, so to say, mirror image of the reverence in which the western man holds a figure like Churchill. We never did and do not support or admire Hitler's ideology and actions and, when push will come to shove (if ever), will be as anti Nazi as a people can be.
Did anyone spot the deliberate mistake: "probably know nothing of the genocide" it should have read.
Hitler popular with Muslims? That figures. All Muslim regimes are facist and it is understandable that Muslims like it that way. It may be true that so called "secular Muslims", who have only a superficial alignment with Allah, will complain about their Islamic masters but when they fully turn to Allah and the Koran for answers in their life, they will accept their masters' word. Birds of a feather...
They have a saying in the East - "Big fish eat little fish, so the little fish have to be careful."
This is a sentiment that is unknown in the West. Little fish have the same rights as big fish.
Honestly I don't approve of parts of what sanjay_111,the self appointed spokesman for all indians has said,his comments on churchill are distasteful and uncalled for,had it not been for churchill,the nazis could have possibly conquered the world and his ancestors too, like the jews of the reich, would have been a statistic,and our country would have been some spare lebensraum for the ubermensch.Churchill wasn't god, he too was a mortal,it is as if he fails sanjay_111's racism test and all he has done is buried once and for all.
I also have reservations against his finishing words:
"We never did and do not support or admire Hitler's ideology and actions and, when push will come to shove (if ever), will be as anti Nazi as a people can be."
So are we not expected to be anti nazi as of today?
"The name tag on his uniform attracted my interest so I asked him why he had this rather unusual name for an Indian man. "Oh, my parents named me after a great historic person," he explained.
The name, in black letters on a golden plate, read: Adolf."
May be his parents meant Adolf Dassler of 1954 hungary-west germany and ADIDAS fame
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Hitler_Frankenstein_in_Meghalaya_Assembly/rssarticleshow/2846608.cms
"The swastika, however, is not the scary symbol in Hindu culture that it is in ours."
Good point, wally--I had forgotten that. The Nazis also stole "sowhilo" from the Elder Futhark (the runes). The SS used it on their uniforms. The runic meaning is wholeness and power.
The Nazis would steal anything that wasn't nailed down. Now who does that remind me of?
Regarding RSS and such: I don't know anything specific about them, so I will withhold judgment but comment on the implied question about fascists, ultra-nationalists and racists (I don't know that RSS is any of those).
It is very dangerous, morally, politically and practically, to make common cause with any sort of collectivists, be they communist, fascist, racist, nationalist, tribalist or congregationalist (which I suppose might be the common term for religion oriented collectivists like the mohammedans). This is for the good and simple reason that all such persons value the collective over the individual, and eventually the amoral, anti-individual beast will bare its teeth and bite you. Indeed, it must.
This is very much the experience that America is now having with the jihaddists it helped to train against the Soviets. It is the experience that the communists had with the Khomeinists.
Ultimately it all comes down to my gang over yours, and my gang over YOU.
Dangerous stuff. Not to mention the moral aspect of making deals with the devil.
That said, in the real live evil world of war, deals with the devil are more common than not. Our morally celebrated war against Hitler was supported by the fiendishly evil, and comparatively more accomplished murderer Stalin. Hmmmm... Icky.
==========
I got the impression that the article was extremely superficial and straining to show a moral equivalence between all approbative regard for Hitler -- without going into any detail about its intellectual base, motive or expression.
I pick up a faint scent of drawing equivalence here on this thread about Hitler and Churchill.
Certainly that seems to be the view of our Mr. Obama, who unceremoniously banned Mr. Churchill's likeness from the White House.
It's a damn blasted pit of confusion.
Racism is what most of the world has called common sense and civic decency for most of the world's history. It's only recently that the racism was given a name and a formal definition, and even more recently that it has been openly recognized as a bad idea and a moral deficiency.
That said, there is a difference between a racist and a mass murderer. There is a difference between a racist and a slave-master. There is a difference between a racist and a genocidal fanatic.
It is entirely possible for a man's character to be superior to his consciously held convictions. And for most of the people who have ever existed, what we now recognize as mere racism has been a component of their consciously held moral code.
That it lead and can lead to murderous action is undeniable. That still doesn't make every ignorant racist bastard out there a murderer. Holding a man in contempt is not the same as cutting his throat.
(And it is not even a given that the idea that it is valid to judge people by race automatically implies that they are worthy of contempt, past the nearly reflexive notion that "my gang is the best".)
The temperamental inclination to hold others in contempt, or worse yet to cut their throats, is a separate matter from being born into idiotic immoral ideologies that recommend such things.
I think that fellow who wrote Son of Hamas said, more or less, that the worst murdering jihaddist is morally superior to the allah of the koran who is the essence of moral corruption, by virtue of merely being human and having some remnant of human feeling.
He has a point. Not to say that the jihaddist shouldn't be killed, and damned promptly. But he has a point.
That said, I have to raise a question about the moral standing of anybody so ignorant in today's world, given the degree to which information is available, who can draw any equivalence between Churchill, who may have sounded like or even been a racist, and Hitler who thought it was a good idea to implement his racism in the form of world-scale mass murder. Or Stalin or Mao for that matter.
"Jawohl, Mein Prophet!"
The only person born in Canada right now named "Adolph Hitler" was given that name at his birth by his Pakistani muslim parents.
Hitler, of course, was great friends with Haj-Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and 'Palestine,' and he also had a special Skanderbeg Corps and over 100,000 muslim troops in his armies - and special muslim SS units with their own 'halal' uniforms serving him.
He has been quoted as bemoaning the injustice of his having been born into the 'weak' Christian religion with it's burden of "Jewish guilt' preferring instead 'The Mohammadan Religion' which would have suited his sense of 'righteous' violence far better:
Adolf Hitler "You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?." (A. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 142-143).
And , of course, Big Mo himself personally lined up 700 innocent Jews, made them dig a huge trench as their grave, then demanded they convert to the Nazi Party - oops! My bad! I meant "to Islam" and then personally shot them in the back of the... I mean, beheaded them for Der Fuhrer... damnit, I meant of course, "For Allah" - I always get those guys mixed up for some reason (maybe because Islam invented those yellow armbands with the stars of David on them, to Dhimmify and humiliate the Jews, which the nazis then copied, according to Professor Bernard Lewis, and of course Big Mo and Hitler shared the same birthday?)! Silly me...!
;-)
I think I need to respond to loner's and joe's comments on Churchill and Hitler.
First off, I did not intend to draw a moral equivalence between Churchill and Hitler though I must say I do not agree there is as much difference between the two mindsets as Churchill's apologists seem to believe. Their remarks show that either they do not fully understand the horror in someone of signficance telling whole peoples they are genetically inferior or they are insensitive to it.
I was only trying to say that if some Hindus show any kind of sympathy for Hitler, they do so only because they are, understandably if not justifiably, blinded by their hatred for the British and the ultimate symbol of western man - Winston Churchill. I also believe that such hatred, while it is desirable to control it, would be a natural response of an average person, to the humiliating experience India suffered under the British.
Having said this, should India ever face a choice between supporting an effort against a Hitler like figure (assuming the western man would not be contemptuous of seeking such support), I am convinced we will choose to fight such a mass murderer and never support him in any way.
Loner and Joeblough, you're right, Sanjay is way over the top about Churchill and the Brits. The caste system -- of one class lording it over another -- was Vedic India's invention, not England's. In fact, the Raj worked as well as it did because their respective class systems complimented each other.
Of course, proud as they are, I don't expect Indians to acknowledge that the British Raj was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to them. Almost every virtue of modernity and almost none of its vices, honest Indians can credited the British, from infrastructure to language to education to democracy. The Brits didn't conquer and slaughter, like the Muslims, they were traders moving into a vacuum, mostly going native. They took over only after they began being slaughtered by Muslim Indians.
Remember the old story of the Raj general stopping a suttee: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
The Raj was a fairly short, relatively benign, very productive and yes, a glorious period in Indian history, not because of the subjugation but because of the marvelous synthesis it produced. Again, I don't expect the Indians to acknowledge this, much less be grateful.
I do think Hindu India has it right in refusing to give Muslims any quarter. In fact, I think Bush's strengthening America's ties to India was brilliant. I only wish it had happened decades earlier.
Counting Pakistan as an ally in the war on Islamic terror is a travesty. Right after 9/11, I'd have said to India, "Deal with the Pakies as you see fit, while we deal with the Afghans." For us the Indians could be to the Islamofascists as the Soviets were to the Nazis, except that in the case of India we'd not have been making a pact with the devil.
As for Mein Kampf, there are two ways to discuss Hitler, as a statesman and as a mass murderer. Non-Muslim Asian Hitler admirers (I doubt there are many) look at the statesman part and are clueless about the mass murderer part. Muslims, on the other hand, are clueless about the statesman part but eagerly embrace the mass murderer part. This speaks volumes about them, as if their own behavior didn't already.
Sanjay,my friend, I being someone as hindu as you,can understand the existential despair that comes with even a mention of the fact that we are a people with a history of thousands of years of slavery and dhimmitude.Do you know that the indian muslims are the largest converted muslim population, even greater than the arabs.The republic of India as we know it today did not emerge from thin air,we simply inherited hundreds of years of work of the british who left us to enjoy a functioning democracy and relative plenty compared to our less fortunate south asian neighbours.The british rule of the subcontinent was the greatest blessing in disguise for its hindu residents who could finally get a breath of equality under law after relentless persecution that left 80 million of them dead.
After having faced so many inconvenient truths I now can figure out that the british were actually our liberators who protected our race from physical extinction and preserved our culture from cruel incineration at the hands of Islam,never mind that we still owe them billions of pounds for building our railway system, telegraph system,postage system,our four metros.The federal government still functions on british built office infrastructure.The british even protected the goa hindus from the portugese inquisition.
The india of today would have been a part of greater pakistan and we all would have been chanting death to israel from our rooftops,if not for the british.
All this can be conveniently thrown in the rubbish heap and we can go on with our lives cursing the british for all our ills while the hindus in pakistan and bangladesh face the worst and most unspeakable persecation.
But remember sanjay,people here are not hero worshippers who will kill you for speaking your mind about churchill,for that you will have to engage some muslim,the british in this forum know that it will be hard for you to come to terms with your own history of dhimmitude,so they silently take it all lying down.
Sanjay:
You wrote: "Having said this, should India ever face a choice between supporting an effort against a Hitler like figure (assuming the western man would not be contemptuous of seeking such support), I am convinced we will choose to fight such a mass murderer and never support him in any way."
I believe you, at least concerning the vast majority of India. The Indians I have met are all, all proof of your view.
And, no, we in the West would not be contemptuous of such support. Most of us really do see you as equals.
The claims of glorious Britannia and Churchill, and the Indian loser who thinks Indians owe everything to the British is what is really over the top here.
Sanjay is right on that if there any admiration for Hitler, it is because he gave to that *other racist busterd*, Churchill a dose of his own medicine. At least Hitler was overtly racist, unlike a hypocrite like Churchill who pretended to be civilized and be involved in the noble task of bearing the white man's burden. I mean, at the time of the greatest violent conflagaration in human history, even as he is being sodomized by the nazis and he is being forced to orally pleasure the Americans to save is sore rear end, he meets a Mahatma Gandhi who comes along with a rather different vision and message and the best he can offer is a racist insult? Count me as a Hindu who is happy that the Nazis bombed the crap out of Britain. That said, I don't really care for the Nazis either, but at least this bit of infighting among the civilized Eurpoeans hastened the end of empire, and that is enough cause for celebration.
It is the same sort of joy one gets from watching the Taliban massacring the jihadi Pakistani army.
And as far as India inherting all that good from Britain, let's get real. Suttee wasn't banned by the British as the lying idiot above writes, it was banned by Raja Rammohan Roy, a Hindu Brahmin Zamindar who *lobbied* the Brits to do it. They had the police force at that time, in a time of crumbling Mughal power in India, especially Bengal, and as a reformist Hindu, he wanted to take an opportunity to do some good. In fact Roy traveled all the way to England to lobby the parliament there to do it. The idea that the English suddenly cared for the black nigger widows of Bengal even as they were pondering the humanity of the trans Atlantic slave trade is rather hilarious. And also, surely, why didn't they ban untouchability? I mean, here they are overflowing with the milk of human kindness and on a roll ("we have banned suttee!") and all that, why only suttee? Why did it take republic India to do so in 1950?
And as for the "infrastructure" the brits built, purely out of socialist, progressive ideals, and not for economic rape of the land, I guess West Africans should also be happy for all the port facilities the slavers built.
The English that the Brits bestowed on the Indians is at least good for puncturing the delusional pompous blowhards on the Internet, I will give you that. Ruckiry I am not Chinese ol Japanese, then many plobrems in explessing and sperring plopelly to make myserf heald.
Ram kumar's fit is understandable,having some time out from prostrating against pictures of marxist idiots gandhi and nehru,he has come to tell us that we would have been better off under the mughal yoke than being a dominion of the "white devils".
This is turning into an interesting discussion. I feel the necessary to respond again.
First off, I have been accused of not acknowledging the good that the British did. This is wrong and someone saying this should first know me as a person before making a personal comment.
I do believe that the British did a lot of good to India. I do believe that the British provided security to a huge majority of Indians and created the space in which Hindu India could reconnect with it's past, it's culture and most important, it's sense of right and wrong. I have no idea how someone got the impression from my posts that I am not willing to acknowledge this.
That still, however, does not justify racist behavior of the kind that Churchill displayed. Nor does it justify glorification of Churchill.
I absolutely do not understand how India's caste system can justify Churchillian mindset and how again an assumption is made that someone who does not like Churchill and British / western racism would be an apologist for Hindu caste system. As it happens, I have faced insults because of my caste too and those experiences cemented my abhorrence for any kind of discrimination based on birth or identity.
Yes, I am convinced that the western world still has a strong undercurrent of racism and it still influences the policies of western nations. I do believe that we Indians should take this into account in our policy making.
And finally, while Hitler was abhorrent character, if some Hindus, because they faced racist insults, sympathize with him, it is to be understood and not punished. On facing similar experience, Muslims turn into terrorists !!
Errata in my second line in last post: I feel the NECESSITY (and not "necessary") to respond again.
Rich in profanity and impoverished in content.Some part of me saw it coming when I mentioned the "existential despair" and there it goes.
So basically you are telling me that the primary mandate of the EI company and the british was to reform the hindu society of all its evils,develop our country,police their people from racism against us and then last of all came business which they were here for in the first place,thats too much to ask for from anyone let alone the colonisers.
That the bloodsucking feudal lords(zamindars)are suddenly reformist heroes surprises me,although they somehow kept quiet with their great reforms during the moghul era,the suttees of that time could also do with some noble zamindars.
In all that cacophony you miss my key point,would you rather jizya,humiliation and sacrilage against your gods or a uniform civil and criminal code,parliamentary representation and governence (albeit the "white devils" on top)?
The harsh reality still holds that the hindus have been on the receiving end for the last thousand years or so,that our entire judiciary, legislature,executive and civil services systems are borrowed western ideas,its a pick and paste democracy yet a work in progress even after six decades, people like ram kumar can comfort themselves by cursing churchill from a safe distance,my advice to such racist-hunters is to save some profanities for the future,they will come in handy when they cease to hold their own.
This is supposed to be a site devoted to discussion of the Muslim menace. Despite the infantile distraction, I'd rather stay focused on the suggestion that close alliance between America and India, in the struggle against jihadi Islam, particularly in AfPak, could prove decisive. I'd include UK and EU, but, alas, they've become dhimmis in their own lands and thus part of the problem.
Rice, I would not use derogatory words such as infantile and try to respect others' views.
Good you have brought back the focus to the issue. An alliance such as suggested by you makes a lot of strategic sense otherwise. But looking at the way western countries look at India and Indians, an alliance is a difficult proposition in practice.
We got too carried away by talk about "shared" values between US / West and India and all that nonsense about India and US being natural allies. I believe India should be prepared to fight Pakistan and Taliban alone. The west will at best be an irritant in this fight. We should, however, keep our cool and stay focused and develop capabilities to neutralize even the nukes owned by Pakistan.
We made the mistake of thinking in the 18th centuries that the British were saviors who would deliver us from Islamic rule. While the British were men of character and did many great things, they would not accept us as equals ever, irrespective of our education, sophistication or achievements in life.
The same holds true to a degree today also and I wish we maintain a dignified distance from the US and the west and do our best to fight this battle alone.
Would India be modernized today had it not been for the British? Most likely, had the British not colonized India, it would be today an Islamic hellhole, or a pastiche of warring tribalisms, largely Muslim vs. Hindu, and neither one modernized.
Everyone (who's awake) knows about the Grand Mufti's close collaboration with Hitler (and after the war, with Arafat).
But there was another significant Muslim involved with Hitler, at least on the level of exchange of ideas. That Muslim was in fact an Indian -- al-Mashriqi (born in 1888).
Al-Mashriqi founded the Khaksar Movement, an Indian Muslim separatist movement. In one of his writings, he expressed designs that go far beyond a mere regional concern in northern India:
“...we [Muslims] have again to dominate the whole world. We have to become its conqueror and its rulers.”
And in a pamphlet titled Islam ki Askari Zindagi he stated:
“The Koran has proclaimed in unequivocal words to the world that the Prophet was sent with the true religion and definite instruction that he should make all other religions subservient to this religion [Islam]...”
Al-Mashriqi also wrote a book called Tazkira which, as Andrew Bostom describes it, “produced a quintessential message of Islam enshrining the ideals of militaristic nation-building” -- i.e., it promulgated and highlighted the supremacist expansionism through militant means that is essential to Islamic doctrine and Islamic history. What is startlingly noteworthy about this is revealed in al-Mashriqi’s own account of his meeting with Hitler in 1926:
“I was astounded when he [Hitler] told me that he knew about my Tazkirah. The news flabbergasted me. . . I found him very congenial and piercing. He discussed Islamic Jihad with me in details. In 1930 I sent him my Isharat concerning the Khaksar movement with a picture of a spade-bearer Khaksar at the end of that book. In 1933 he started his Spade Movement. ”
For more details and links, see:
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/10/hitler-and-islam_28.html
I want to add to my last post.
It is remarkable watching the ingrates fall over each other swearing on the same people who saved their asses from extinction.
Let me get this straight, god is the biggest racist of us all,he is the root of all racial discrimination,he deserves the first curse from ram kumar and sanjay,when people are ashamed of what they are they will take offense in everything,the perfect raceless world is as big an impossibility as the elusive wild goose of marxist classlesness.God made born racists of us all,it took an eternity for morality to prevail on fundamental instincts,the racial equality in today's world is a progeny of liberal ideas constructed over many centuries.To expect superhuman morality from colonial era britain is unjust . Ram kumar points to the incident of churchill calling gandhi a half naked fakir.Gandhi shows up at chrchill's,in a loincloth,while the enemy is at the gates,blitzkreig is on,.the rest in ram kumar's words:
"he meets a Mahatma Gandhi who comes along with a rather different vision and message and the best he can offer is a racist insult?"
Care to disclose what different message Gandhi had for him,...........non violent surrender? The man asked him to surrender the country and the empire to the axis,he had on an another occasion shamelessly proclaimed that the jews should commit mass suicide(he had this thing for non-voilent this non-violent that). Now once Gandhi's antics become general knowledge about india all over the world people suddenly start getting offended on calling a man in a loincloth half naked, do they expect him to be called a sharp dresed connoiseur?
Sanjay, I describe being called a "lying idiot" as infantile, and you rebuke me?
You and your fellow sorehead have debased this discussion with strident, obsessive Muslim-like diatribes. As much catharsis as they provide to emotionally needy souls -- like rioting in the streets following a perceived slight -- they contribute nothing constructive.
Your cherry-picked history serves only to support your obsessive, irrelevant grievances about colonialism. In fact, Brits treated Indians with far more respect than Indians treated each other. The Raj was in an age of universal class distinctions embraced frankly by Gandhi and still pervasive today. Your glib historical presentism is not only incompetent but dishonest, hence not worth addressing further.
By the way, another cultural trait the Brits and the Indians shared, besides class-consciousness, was arrogance, of which you provide a rich sampling. At least the Brits had something to be arrogant about. Your arrogance is the pose of insecure adolescence, which you may grow out of, when and if you and your trash-mouth soul mate reach adulthood.
Loner, you are tiresome. Your nonsensical, ill-punctuated claptrap is undecipherable, and I have declined to read most of it as I have better things to do. Suffice it to say that you are an ignorant lonesome loser who would rather lick the boots of the English than the Muslims. That summarizes your entire vomit above?
People claiming that India would be an Islamic hellhole were it not for the British continue to belie their racist patronizing attitudes. Somehow the Japanese, Chinese, Thais etc have been able to modernize, but the Indians, heirs to a magnificiant civilization of millenia would have not?
BTW, the British also colonized Pakistan, Burma, Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia, Singapore, Srilanka, Uganda, Zimbabwe, among numerous others. Now why is it that only India held on to democracy? And how have the others been "modernized" thanks to British subjugation? Zimbabwe for example? To what do we Indians owe this awesome generosity of the English that they didn't bestow on others? Was it the Chicken Tikka Masala?
As I said, the Nazis having a go at Churchills England is exactly like the Taliban fighting the other jihadi scumbags known as the Paki army. The latter pretends to be a modern civilized facade even while it nurses ambitions of Islamofacist granduer and dreams of a time when dhimmis were dhimmis and the muslim aristocracy could live it up by lording over the others. Just like ye olde England of yore. And now the Taliban have questions about who is the proper, purer Muslim, just like the Nazis had some questions about who was the whitest of 'em all. What to do with the muddy Celtic rifraff part of britannia? Hilarious. Anyway, there we are, back to the topic.
JM Rice, I apologize. It looks like I should have called you a "lying racist ignorant idiot", as you have made clearer in some of your subsequent posts.
Keep up your longings for empire! As Churchill's desire to prop up Jinnah and Pakistan bears fruit with your very own lumpen jihadi fanatics who will one day fight for Bradfordistan, you can continue to harbor delusions of the Raj. Much like muslims today in fact, who dream of the Caliphate.
"Somehow the Japanese, Chinese, Thais etc have been able to modernize, but the Indians, heirs to a magnificiant civilization of millenia would have not?"
All those mentioned -- Japanese, Chinese, and Thais -- as well as all other Third World peoples, from Central & South America, Africa and Asia, have been modernized by Western colonialism and post-colonialism, and would not have modernized without that Western influence. The West is unique in bringing modernization and secularization to the world. Show some gratitude.
Rice,
I am sorry that I misunderstood who your comment "infantile" was directed against. I am prepared to withdraw my "rebuke".
I again fail to understand how I came across as "arrogant". I am not commenting about other anti - Churchill posters here. I feel Indians have done terribly in managing our affairs and I wish we threw up better leadership that will run the affairs more sensibly.
Looking at your supposition that I or Indians in general are arrogant and your other comments, I can only say that you have preconceived notions about Indians and are implanting those on me or other posters.
Finally, I must say your racism does come through when you say British have something to be arrogant about whereas Indians don't. I can answer that sort of a remark but I agree that we should stop this discussion here and focus on the core issue that this site is supposed to address.
"And as far as India all that good from Britain"
"Sanjay is right on that if admiration for Hitler....."
"I mean, at the time of the greatest violent in human history..."
"and he is being forced to orally pleasure the Americans to save sore rear end..."
"In fact Roy all the way to England.............."
"The claims of glorious Britannia and Churchill, and the Indian loser who thinks Indians owe everything to the British what is really over the top here."
It looks like ramu boy needs to work on some subject-verb agreement and basic spelling,if only he had time out from delivering lofty sermons on punctuation to other people,but that is the problem arguing with idiots,first they pull you down to their level and then they defeat you with their experience. Discretion can only be expected from people with common sense who know that one has only a limited command on a foreign language,if ramu thinks he is a walking talking word processor whose only job is finding solecisms in others' language while ignoring the content then i am afraid i can't help.
"Your nonsensical, ill-punctuated claptrap is undecipherable, and I have declined to read most of it as I have better things to do."
I can understand ramu,deciphering can be one hell of a job when you yourself are a cipher,never mind, you can always blindfold yourself with your "magnificiant civilization of millenia ",too magnificient to defend its own borders from a bunch of muslim nomads,it seems you think that serving our hyperinflated egoes on imaginary historic acheivement should come first and feeding our starving children second,it is instructive to note that the south koreans started from the same place that we did i.e. from an unindustrialized post colonial state and look where the are,on the pinnacle of the first world while forty percent of us can't feed their family.
But you are telling us not to look within, because everything is the "racist" people's fault, too bad for you that the same racist colonialist britain bailed our economy out during the early 90s balance of payments crisis and pushed the manmohan singh reforms to shake off the nehruvian socialist curse.Our current economic helth is simply the trickle-down of the first world,the sad state of affairs from independence to the 90s shows how well we can do without the racist colonialists.
KINDLY IGNORE THE COMMENT ABOVE FOR UNEXPLAINED LOSS OF FORMATTING
"And as far as India INHERTING all that good from Britain"
"Sanjay is right on that if THERE ANY admiration for Hitler....."
"I mean, at the time of the greatest violent CONFLAGARATION in human history..."
"and he is being forced to orally pleasure the Americans to save IS sore rear end..."
"In fact Roy TRAVELED all the way to England.............."
"The claims of glorious Britannia and Churchill, and the Indian loser who thinks Indians owe everything to the British IS what is really over the top here."
It looks like ramu boy needs to work on some subject-verb agreement and basic spelling,if only he had time out from delivering lofty sermons on punctuation to other people,but that is the problem arguing with idiots,first they pull you down to their level and then they defeat you with their experience. Discretion can only be expected from people with common sense who know that one has only a limited command on a foreign language,if ramu thinks he is a walking talking word processor whose only job is finding solecisms in others' language while ignoring the content then i am afraid i can't help.
"Your nonsensical, ill-punctuated claptrap is undecipherable, and I have declined to read most of it as I have better things to do."
I can understand ramu,deciphering can be one hell of a job when you yourself are a cipher,never mind, you can always blindfold yourself with your "magnificiant civilization of millenia ",too magnificient to defend its own borders from a bunch of muslim nomads,it seems you think that serving our hyperinflated egoes on imaginary historic acheivement should come first and feeding our starving children second,it is instructive to note that the south koreans started from the same place that we did i.e. from an unindustrialized post colonial state and look where the are,on the pinnacle of the first world while forty percent of us can't feed their family.
But you are telling us not to look within, because everything is the "racist" people's fault, too bad for you that the same racist colonialist britain bailed our economy out during the early 90s balance of payments crisis and pushed the manmohan singh reforms to shake off the nehruvian socialist curse.Our current economic helth is simply the trickle-down of the first world,the sad state of affairs from independence to the 90s shows how well we can do without the "racist colonialists".
Stormwarning wrote:
"The swastika, however, is not the scary symbol in Hindu culture that it is in ours."
Good point, wally--I had forgotten that. The Nazis also stole "sowhilo" from the Elder Futhark (the runes). The SS used it on their uniforms. The runic meaning is wholeness and power.
.....................
Stormwarning, the National Socialists were responsible for many horrors, but they did not 'steal' the swastika from Hindu India. The swastika is an ancient symbol, that appears from India to Europe.
In India, it is symbolic of the wheel of life and reincarnation. In pagan northern Europe, the meaning was different. The Nazis adopted the swastika as a reference to the Teutonic Hammer of Thor.
What would Ghandi do?