Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf

[Lunar]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5182107/Indian-business-students-snap-up-copies-of-Mein-Kampf.html

Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru.



Booksellers told The Daily Telegraph that while it is regarded in most countries as a 'Nazi Bible', in India it is considered a management guide in the mould of Spencer Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese".

Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year

Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration.

"Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we're happy to sell it to them," said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.

"They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it".

Jaico Publishing House, one of the publishers in India, said it reprints a new edition of the book at least twice a year to meet growing demand.

"We were the first company to publish the book in India and there are now six other Indian publishers of the book, although we were first to take a chance on it," said Jaico's chief editor, R H Sharma, who dismissed any moral issues in publishing Mein Kampf.

"The initial print run of 2,000 copies in 2003 sold out immediately and we knew we had a best-seller on our hands. Since then the numbers have increased every year to around 15,000 copies until last year when we sold 10,000 copies over a six-month period in our Delhi shops," he added.

Senior academics cite the mutual influence of India and Hitler's Nazis on one another. Mahatma Gandhi corresponded with the Fuhrer, pro-Independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army allied with Hitler's Germany and Japan during the Second World War, and the Nazis drew on Hindu symbolism for their Swastika motif and ideas of Aryan supremacy.

Dr J Kuruvachira, Professor of Philosophy of Salesian College in Nagaland and who has cited Mein Kampf as a source of inspiration to the Hindu nationalist BJP, said he believed the book's popularity was due to political reasons.

"While it could be the case that management students are buying the book, my feeling is that it has more likely influenced some of the fascist organisations operating in India and nearby," he said.

India is not the only country where Mein Kampf is popular. It has been a best-seller in Croatia since it was first published in while in turkey it sold 100,000 in just two months in 2005. In Russia it has been reprinted three times since the de facto ban on the book was overturned in 1992.

In Germany the book's copyright is held by the state of Bavaria where its publication is banned until 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death.

In India, any book more than 25 years old is free of copyright, which has paved the way for six separate publishers to print the book.

[dead0man]

How odd.

[Lunar]

particularly

"Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration.

...

They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it."

[War on Want]

Why am I not surprised it is popular in Croatia...

[Lunar]

Why am I not surprised it is popular in Croatia...

history?

[??????????]

I read one chapter of it in a book store and found it to damn babbling to continue forth.

[Gustaf]

Why am I not surprised it is popular in Croatia...

history?

Croatia has strong fascist traditions, yes. They have always been linked to Germany and the fascist party Ustasa committed some pretty horrible atrocities during WWII. These were of course in part pay-back for what had been done to them by the Serbs before the war and was paid back by the Serbs after the war, leading to the brutalities of the 90s.

Interestingly, due to cultural and historical reasons Hungary and Italy both disliked Croatia while Hitler hated Hungary. This scheming led to Italy supporting the Serb royalists in the Balkan fighting which in turn made the Allies drop their support of them.

[minionofmidas]

I read one chapter of it in a book store and found it to damn babbling to continue forth.

That seems to be, by and large, the verdict of just about everybody who has read it. Few people did back in the 30s... I wonder about those Indian readers.
Indians tend to know virtually nothing very little about Hitler beyond the name, and that the war against him pretty much brought down the British Empire, and certainly ushered in Independence.

[Lunar]

Indeed, good point.  Even most Nazis couldn't read through all of the random ramblings about STD's and so on.

lol at Wikipedia for having a short "criticism' segment on its wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf#Criticism

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

I heard several times that the book tends to be trendy nowadays in Turkey and also in some other Arab countries, as well as the "Protocol of the Elders of Zion". Well, Israel's issue...

[Beet]

India has a soft spot for anyone who fought against the British, for obvious reasons. Besides, when Winston Churchill talked of "if the British Empire were to last a thousand years...", all Indians know what he meant. The Nazi belief in Aryan superiority and the ancient Aryans' colonization of northern India only reinforces it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Nazi belief in Aryan superiority and the ancient Aryans' colonization of northern India only reinforces it.

Sometimes words do not mean the same thing.

[The Mikado]

I remember having to struggle through a 6 page excerpt once.  It was like bashing my head into a concrete wall.

[Lunar]

I feel sorry for the translators

[Sbane]

India has a soft spot for anyone who fought against the British, for obvious reasons. Besides, when Winston Churchill talked of "if the British Empire were to last a thousand years...", all Indians know what he meant. The Nazi belief in Aryan superiority and the ancient Aryans' colonization of northern India only reinforces it.

Absolutely correct except for the last sentence. Conservative upper caste Hindus today deny that the Aryan invasion ever happened. They actually argue that the Aryan invasion theory is racist itself as it is another case of Europe trying to take credit for Indian civilization. Bunch of bullsh**t of course. So I don't think the Nazi belief of Aryan superiority would have any relevance to most Indians. I think the relative fondness of WW2 Germany in India has to do with the first reasons you mentioned.

[minionofmidas]

Some Dalit intellectuals argue that Brahmins are basically foreign oppressors like the British and the Mughals. And point out that cow worship is really worship of upper-caste rule, as the Aryans brought the cow to India - the native bovine being the water buffalo.
Obviously, anybody raised in normal Hindu thought patterns reacts to hearing or reading things like that with all the calm and composition of a scalded cat.

[Sbane]

Some Dalit intellectuals argue that Brahmins are basically foreign oppressors like the British and the Mughals. And point out that cow worship is really worship of upper-caste rule, as the Aryans brought the cow to India - the native bovine being the water buffalo.
Obviously, anybody raised in normal Hindu thought patterns reacts to hearing or reading things like that with all the calm and composition of a scalded cat.

Well of course they will argue that since we have evidence of the invasion.I was just pointing out that Brahmins don't look at it this way and thus wouldn't find Hitler's ideas of Aryan supremacy as relevant to them. Now if he was talking about Brahmin supremacy it would be a whole another story. Of course the dalits are right, the aryans were foreign invaders who basically subjugated the population. But actually there was a lot of mixing from the time of the invasion till about the 4th century. I think it was only then that the caste system got to the extremely rigid system we see today.

Cow worship is interesting. I thought it actually came from the Harappans and there have been coins and tablets found with the picture of an Indian bull, the one widely used to till fields. I wouldnt' think a people who had to live in the semi-arid regions of central Asia would concern themselves too much with worshiping cows and not eating meat. There is also nothing similar that occurred in ancient Iran or Greece and Rome. I think cow worship only makes sense in the Indian context, in that it is more efficient to use your cows for tilling the fields and giving you milk than to eat it. Of course the Aryans co opted a lot of the indigenous beliefs and made them their own in order to gain acceptance in India and perhaps this is another case of that. 

[minionofmidas]

Some Dalit intellectuals argue that Brahmins are basically foreign oppressors like the British and the Mughals. And point out that cow worship is really worship of upper-caste rule, as the Aryans brought the cow to India - the native bovine being the water buffalo.
Obviously, anybody raised in normal Hindu thought patterns reacts to hearing or reading things like that with all the calm and composition of a scalded cat.

Well of course they will argue that since we have evidence of the invasion.I was just pointing out that Brahmins don't look at it this way and thus wouldn't find Hitler's ideas of Aryan supremacy as relevant to them. Now if he was talking about Brahmin supremacy it would be a whole another story. Of course the dalits are right

Note the use of the present tense in that first sentence I wrote...

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Exactly. The labyrinthine modern caste hierarchy was born of a synthesis of Aryan and pre-Aryan traditions. The system of three major classes described in the oldest Vedic texts is not all that far from what we find in many other early Indo-European societies (or even elsewhere).

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The Aryans certainly had cows, but the Harappans had cows (Zebus) too, actually. Cows make more sense than water buffalo when you want to grow wheat or millet. Water buffalo make more sense when you want to grow rice. The Aryans certainly had no water buffalo. If you can imbibe copious quantities of milk (as most Euros and Indians and East Africans can, but not most people elsewhere), and if you have fields to plough and no machines for it, it makes no sense to eat cows. Cow worship certainly goes back to the vedas, but vegetarianism might not.

Make of that what you will. -_-

[Sbane]

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The Aryans certainly had cows, but the Harappans had cows (Zebus) too, actually. Cows make more sense than water buffalo when you want to grow wheat or millet. Water buffalo make more sense when you want to grow rice. The Aryans certainly had no water buffalo. If you can imbibe copious quantities of milk (as most Euros and Indians and East Africans can, but not most people elsewhere), and if you have fields to plough and no machines for it, it makes no sense to eat cows. Cow worship certainly goes back to the vedas, but vegetarianism might not.

Make of that what you will. -_-

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[minionofmidas]

Of course, in the South it is not just the Brahmins who are vegetarian.

Any restaurant ("hotel" as they confusingly call them) down south is advertised either as "Pure Veg" or "Veg and Non-Veg". And few vegetarians would ever eat at a place that isn't "pure veg".

[The Mikado]

There is also nothing similar that occurred in ancient Iran or Greece and Rome. 

I might be way off on this, but wasn't cattle rustling one of the top sins in Zoroastrianism?

[Gustaf]

Concerning Aryans I know of a couple of people who actually do make the connection. One Iranian guy who was a Nazi and claimed himself as an Aryan and a girl I know knew an Indian guy in her corridor who had the same idea.

[Sbane]

There is also nothing similar that occurred in ancient Iran or Greece and Rome. 

I might be way off on this, but wasn't cattle rustling one of the top sins in Zoroastrianism?

Interesting. I actually didn't know that. Yet IIRC most traditions in India, not just Aryan, don't kill cows.