Shah insisted that until the store opened he did not know who Adolf Hitler was and that Hitler was a nickname given to the grandfather of his store partner because “he was very strict”. He added, “I didn’t know how much the name would disturb people. It was only when the store opened I learnt Hitler had killed 60 lakh people.”
Members of Jewish community have condemned the store’s name, while a senior Israeli diplomat said the embassy would raise the matter “in the strongest possible way.”
“People use such names mostly out of ignorance,” said Israel’s Mumbai Consul General Orna Sagiv. Esther David, a prominent Indian writer in Ahmedabad who is Jewish, said she was “disturbed and distressed” by the shop, but added that some Indians used the word “Hitler” casually to describe autocratic people. David said Jewish residents had sought to change Shah’s mind about the store’s name and told him about the Holocaust.*
Link.
Gujaratis (the state where the store owner is from) are born entrepreneurs.
I do not think the owner meant to offend Jews. He wanted to have a " different" name to the store to have extra footfall. He now will be cursing that decision.
I have not seen Hitler being admired " as killer of Jews" anywhere in India. But many people do admire German discipline.
Having said that, I have spoken to a person named “Hitler shah” a small time trader. He was a very nice guy, and diametrically opposite in behavior to his namesake.
Next time you condescend to someone make sure you bother to read all 6 sentences in their post. I said India joined WW2 with the allies against the Axis, sending millions of troops. But maybe WW2 hasn’t affected their culture the way it has in the west to the point where Hitler and the nazis are considered the pinnacle of evil. Perhaps it is not much worse than our beliefs about Atilla the Hun.
Hey, the doors of ex-King Mahendra of Nepal are decorated with swastikas. The swastika was also known to the US Plains Indians…it seems to be a universal symbol.
Sorry, I’m not buying the religious excuse or the pretend ignorance. Seriously? This guy didn’t know who Hitler was?
Because see, even if the swastika is a known religious symbol outside the context of Naziism, when you combine that symbol with Hitler’s name you get…Naziism.
I’d buy this excuse if it were a 12 year old’s “Hitler’s Lemonade Stand” in Somalia…not from a guy that owns a swanky clothing store in a country like India.
This was an attempt to be controversial to drum up sales that blew up in his face because he’s a dumbass. Nothing more.
I don’t think the swastika makes a difference here. There’s a non-Nazi context for swastikas but none for Hitler. I don’t know if he’s telling the truth or not, but the fact that he used a swastika in combination with Hitler doesn’t convince me that he’s more aware of who Hitler was than his use of Hitler alone. If he were selling shirts that said “Juicy Auschwitz” on them, then yes, I’d say he was well aware of what the Nazis were about and was trying to use the controversy for marketing purposes before it got out of hand. I think the idiot explanation is still in play.
This is just an idiot who thought Hitler was famous enough to drive sales to his new store.
I sincerely doubt whether he knows the massacre of the Jews by Hitler, which is obvious from his demand that customers reimburse him for his expenses. :smack:
When others were killing our children, you were able to save them.” Emotional statements are not the stuff of formal interactions between high dignitaries, but *this is precisely what Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said to President Pratibha Patil during his visit to India in September this year. It was a clear indication that nearly 70 years on, the heartwarming story of hundreds of Polish children who found sanctuary in the princely state of Nawanagar in the Kathiawar region of present-day Gujarat during World War II is still remembered with gratitude in their homeland.
The celebrated ‘Kindertransport’ project, in which the UK rescued thousands of children from Nazi Germany and occupied Europe in 1938, finds an echo in the noble decision by Digvijaysinhji, the maharaja, or ‘Jam Saheb’, of Nawanagar to take in Polish children from war-torn, occupied Poland and Soviet prison camps. The Jam Saheb took personal risks to make the arrangements at a time when the world was at war, and when the exhausted refugees were denied entry at all ports. Digvijaysinhji, son of the legendary cricketer-prince Ranjitsinhji, built a camp for them in a place called Balachadi beside his summer palace, 25 km from his capital, Jamnagar, and made them feel at home. The Jam Saheb’s gesture is said to have paved the way for thousands of Polish refugees to be received in other parts of the world, including some other places in India*.
The level of thought in certain parts of the western world apparently also needs an upgrade. Neither Hitler nor the Nazis loom anywhere near as large on the Indian consciousness as they do in the west, and for good reason. As Wesley Clark’s post notes, there are plenty of evil figures in history that don’t hold any repugnance for Americans. It’s the same thing in this case. For the average shopkeeper in particular, Hitler is just a figure in history, and someone else’s history at that. The connotation his name holds is that of a famous authoritarian, not a personification of evil as people in the west seem to regard him. India at the time was ruled by the British and didn’t really have any say in participating in the war. One of the most popular Indian leaders held the following view regarding India’s enforced participation in WW2. From wiki(but well referenced) -
Good post. India has a westernised elite, some of whom are touchy feely types who may regard this as a <gasp> outrage, but most of our history and culture focused on the British Raj as the bad guys. Hitler only managed a footnote.
It may also be of note that Subhash Chandra Bose, “Netaji”=“The Leader” was the leader of a group advocating armed resistance against British rule during the Second World War. He escaped to Nazi Germany, met Hitler, and organised German and Japanese units composed of surrendered Indian troops to fight against the British. Calcutta airport is named after him. As noted above, Mein Kampf still sells well at roadside bookstalls. There is an Indian politician named (in part) Adolf Hitler. So Hitler is not so much an anathema in some parts of India as one might expect.
*The proprietors said it may take a few days to change the shop’s board — adorned with the word Hitler and ‘i’ dotted with a Nazi swastika.
“We received at least 10 calls everyday from the US, the UK, Dubai, Germany and Israel. It was getting very annoying, as many of these people called at odd hours,” said Shah.*
