Thursday, May 28, 2009

India: They Love Israel--And They Love Hitler Too!

On the one hand, India has a sympathy for Israel that extends beyond the positive feelings that the US has for Israel:
From India with love
Study on behalf of Foreign Ministry ranks India, US as most pro-Israel countries

The greatest level of sympathy towards Israel can be found in India, according to international study on behalf of the Foreign Ministry, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Friday.

According to the study, which was unprecedented in scope and was undertaken by an international market research company, 58% of Indian respondents showed sympathy to the Jewish State. The United States came in second, with 56% of American respondents sympathizing with Israel.
Read the whole thing.

But if that is true, how do you square that...with this:
An article in London's Daily Telegraph last month reported that sales of Mein Kampf 'are soaring in India where business students regard the genocidal dictator (Hitler) as a management guru' and consider the book to be a 'management guide.'

"Anyone seeking to teach tomorrow's business leaders of India should reject globalisation of hate and racism, not facilitating it," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a leading Jewish NGO at the United Nations.

"Using Mein Kampf as a self-improvement and strategy guide for India's young is an outrage that dishonours six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Adolf Hitler's murderous Third Reich. Honouring and promoting Hitler's white racist ideology mocks the values of the world's largest democracy, and flies in the face of India's noble history of protecting minority peoples, Jews among them" he added.
Read the whole thing.

I have never read Mein Kampf, so I do not know if--or how--it could be possible, but somehow it seems that in India they have succeeded in isolating the hate and evil of Hitler's from the rest of the content.

I guess that would explain how in India they can see what a good book on people management Hitler wrote and ignore not only that he lost the war--but that some of his 'employees' tried to kill him.

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2 comments:

Freedom Fighter said...

This is a little unfair, IMO.

Keep in mind that India has over 100 million Muslims, and as you know, Mein Kampf is a huge bestseller in that group, especially in the Arab world.

I doubt too many Sikhs, Jains and Hindu are reading Hitler.

Regards,
Rob

Daled Amos said...

Interesting point.

But even putting aside the Muslim population, I was under the impression that the book did not contain that much blatant anti-Semitic or racist material as opposed to being nationalistic.

I assumed that being far removed chronologically and geographically from the issue of Hitler, those people really were able to turn a blind idea to the racist component of the book.

Also, I don't know if the Muslims in India are that interested in business management books, which is how MK is being seen.