How do you react to a store called "Hitler" located in Ahmadabad, the capital city of the state of Gujarat in India? ? That the store owners are atavistic, insensitive or antisemitic? Or, plain ignorant?
I would say that it's a sign of rising neo-Nazism in certain parts of India.
Gujarat is notorious for its communal riots and for its exploitative politics that seeks to divide residents on the basis of religion and caste.
In other words, the state isn't a stranger to genocide, and the name "Hitler" is singularly emblematic of history's worst genocide.
Hindu chauvinists--the kind that propagandize against Muslims, Christians, and homosexuals--have traditionally sought kinship with Nazism laboring under the false assumption that Hitler's brigade appropriated the swastika out of reverence for the Hindu sacred symbol and that the Nazi elevation of the Aryans as the best tribe in the history of humanity brings the Hindu "Arya Putras" into the pantheon of Hitler's Aryans by default.
Thus while they are not consciously antisemitic, Hindu Chauvinists could be considered to be pro-Nazi.
Yet, were Hitler still alive and brandishing his nefarious dreams of global imperialism based on the extermination of the impure races, the Ahmadabaddies would be deemed lower than the Jews, gypsies and homosexuals that Hitler sought to either enslave or destroy.
Not too long ago, The Mein Kampf was on India's best sellers list. I wonder what the status of the book is as we speak.
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