The Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor starrer Bawaal has been received with confusion at best and horror at worst for its easy invocation of Nazi atrocities, concentration camps and Adolf Hitler. In this Bollywood melodrama, relationships are their own battlefields, individual sights of unspeakable horror — just like Auschwitz.
The name Hitler is whispered, synonymous with human depravity and ethnic cleansing. In Europe, it’s a shameful reminder of a past that needs to be remembered and cannot be forgotten. There is a milder obsession, of World War 2 films and portrayals of suffering. India, on the other hand, enjoys Hitler; the Nazi leader is easy to slide into conversation, consumer-friendly and applicable in various cultural scenarios.
The most recent example of this in Indian pop culture is on influencer Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcast. In a YouTube video which discusses a “career hack” used by Hitler to become “powerful”, Allahbadia asks “Hitler was an evil man, but who isn’t?”
This view of Hitler as a run-of-the-mill ‘evil but powerful’ man is one explanation for why India has a fascination with the dictator. From soap operas, and stand-up comedy to roadside book stalls selling Mein Kampf, it’s an incorrigible obsession.
Zee has a host of mainstream Hitler-themed TV shows in multiple regional languages. In the Hindi soap, Hitler Didi, the protagonist is Indira Sharma, a “strict but kind-hearted woman”. Hitler Kalyana is one of Kannada television’s “most-loved” television shows, it recently completed 500 episodes. The blurb of the Malayalam Mrs Hitler says it is about DK, “a perfectionist”, and Jyothirmayi, “an impulsive girl.” We don’t know who resembles Hitler — DK or Jyothirmayi.
These shows do not belong to the same category as Bawaal. There is no symbolic inclusion of Hitler or concentration camps as metaphors for love. But it signals how war crimes have devolved into mainstream content, referred to casually. Hitler is not whispered in the shadows of shame, but broadcast and consumed. The titles seem to exist for a singular purpose — fun.
The Nazi leader is a familiar figure for Indians. The images he conjures may be of horror, but there is a comfortable amount of distance and so he is just provocative enough to inspire a couple more viewers, who may not have otherwise been part of the Hindi/Malayalam/Kannada soap-opera fandom.
In Bawaal, Varun Dhawan’s character Ajay Dixit tells his wife: “We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?”
Also Read: How judiciary helped Hitler and Stalin in destroying political opposition
Neatly-packaged Nazi
Then there are those who are genuinely taken by Hitler, his not-so-secret admirers. Back in 2010, the BBC, chasing the meteoric rise behind the sale of Hitler merchandise and memorabilia in India, interviewed his latest generation of fans. There is matter-of-fact tempering: The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side,” said a student.
The same student confessed she hadn’t read Mein Kampf, an unabashed bestseller in the country, but would wear a T-shirt with Hitler’s face on it –– out of sheer devotion.
In May this year, a Deloitte associate turned Linkedin influencer decided to focus on the best parts of Hitler’s personality: his intellectualism, oratorship and discipline. The post ended with a casual “Heil Hitler!”. Comments were turned off, because maybe just like their heroes, influencers also don’t do too well with criticism. Eventually, public opinion turned against him and the post as well as his account were deleted.
Hitler merch sells reasonably well; Nazi-themed coffee mugs, coasters, and phone covers. One coaster by an online store packages Hitler neatly –– a pastel background with the silhouette of the man, recognisable by his toothbrush moustache. Brands sell their products by marketing them as ‘quirky’ and occasionally irreverent. Hitler, for now over a decade, has been packaged as a décor item for teens and young professionals.
The German dictator has never been a despised figure in India like he is in the West. The RSS’ respect for Hitler’s vision and ideology goes back to their second chief MS Gowalkar. The Sarsanghchalak who coined the term Hindu Rashtra also had a deep admiration for Hitler. In his book We, or Our Nationhood Defined Golwalkar writes “…To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. …a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
In comparison, the treatment meted out to Hitler in Bollywood films is much milder but he continues to generate a great deal of interest.
His popularity has long gone beyond the mounting sales of Mein Kampf. The 2011 Hindi movie Dear Friend Hitler, renamed and released as Gandhi to Hitler in India tells the story of the letter Gandhi wrote to the Nazi dictator. In the film Gandhism trumps Nazism. However, it is interesting to note the detailed exploration of Hitler’s relationship with his partner, Eva Braun, as he lives out his final days in his Berlin bunker.
Last year, comedian Munawar Faruqui raised eyebrows when his set contained a reimagined Holocaust, where Hitler is Hitesh and Jews at concentration camps would have been fed an ample supply of dhoklas and died of a different kind of gas (flatulence). The 18-minute video is another example of how randomly Hitler is evoked, and how he is moulded to fit the Indian context.
India loves Hitler, but he may not have reciprocated. Hitler and India –– The Untold Story of His Hatred for the Country and its People, soon to be published by HarperCollins, may come as a bit of a slap in the face for his legion of admirers. But as all fans know, love can stay unrequited. What matters most is resilience (in marketable, consumer-friendly forms). And so, Hitler will continue to endure.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)