First came the Hitler insults and we did nothing. Next came the worse than Hitler gaalis and we still stood silent (see below).
What next? Stalin....well no that is actually a live politician in India, and he only wants to finish off his elder brother...so that would make him an Aurangzeb.... no wait, Stalin's father himself abandoned his eldest son and gave Stalin the throne...which implies Stalin is actually Bharat....
Mao....well there are many live blood-red Maoists in India (only fake Maos in his own home-land) and strong words will not break their bones...for that you need AK-47s (actual not metaphorical guns).
Fun fact (#1): The actual Hitler collaborator Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (see below) founded the Forward Block which is a partner in the current Left Front coalition in Bengal.
The Nehru-Gandhi family does not like Bose (he could have upstaged Nehru but for the intervention of Gandhi). As befits the party of (supposed) nationalists BJP (and Arun Jaitley) should take this opportunity and claim Bose as their own (as they have claimed Sardar Patel). That may win them a few extra votes in Bengal.
Fun fact (#2): The Emergency that Arun Jaitley describes was led by Mrs Gandhi and supported by the Communists (CPI) on direct instructions from Moscow.
So here you have an example of a (worse than) Hitler collaborator working for a foreign pay-master.
This may well be the worst possible political gaali. Please mail in the check, Mr Jaitley.
Victor Mallet gives the back-story in the Financial Times
What is it about Adolf Hitler and India? I thought it was the British who were uniquely persistent in their post-war obsession with the Nazi dictator.
(Humourist Alan Coren entitled one of his books Golfing for Cats and put a Nazi flag on the cover because he had learned that golf, cats and Nazis were the three topics that sold well.)
Modi’s opponents on the left relish the comparison with the man responsible for the murder of 6m Jews because it hints at the darkest moment in the BJP leader’s past: the days in 2002 when hundreds of members of the Muslim minority were killed by Hindu rioters in Gujarat, soon after Modi became the state’s chief minister. Sitaram Yechury, a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), told the FT last year that Modi’s popularity was “chillingly reminiscent of the appeal that Hitler had among the German youth”.
Yet it is not only right-wingers in the BJP that are the targets of Hitler jibes. Arun Jaitley, one of the most senior BJP leaders and a likely cabinet minister in any Modi government, said it was Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother Indira Gandhi who was the real Hitler in India’s post-independence history.
“The comparison between Hitler and her was startling,” he said on his blog in a bitter response to Rahul Gandhi’s comments in Gujarat. Jaitley reminded his readers that he had spent 19 months in jail during the emergency and authoritarian rule imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 and read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in prison.
“Suspension of democracy, abrogation of civil liberties, detention of political opponents, suspension of democratic activity, abandonment of free press, absence of judicial independence and [vesting] of power in one person were features of Hitler’s regime. Each step had inspired Indira-ji’s internal Emergency. There was one basic difference between the two. Hitler did not promote a dynasty because he did not have one to promote.”
...But Subhas Chandra Bose, a radical Congress leader, cooperated with Nazi Germany and with Japan during the second world war and raised an army of liberation that was eventually defeated along with the Japanese.
I can add a personal footnote: When I first met our doctor in Delhi, I was surprised by his unusual first name and asked him whether his father had opposed colonial rule in the days of the British Raj. He said he had. The doctor’s name is Rommel.
regards
What next? Stalin....well no that is actually a live politician in India, and he only wants to finish off his elder brother...so that would make him an Aurangzeb.... no wait, Stalin's father himself abandoned his eldest son and gave Stalin the throne...which implies Stalin is actually Bharat....
Mao....well there are many live blood-red Maoists in India (only fake Maos in his own home-land) and strong words will not break their bones...for that you need AK-47s (actual not metaphorical guns).
Fun fact (#1): The actual Hitler collaborator Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (see below) founded the Forward Block which is a partner in the current Left Front coalition in Bengal.
The Nehru-Gandhi family does not like Bose (he could have upstaged Nehru but for the intervention of Gandhi). As befits the party of (supposed) nationalists BJP (and Arun Jaitley) should take this opportunity and claim Bose as their own (as they have claimed Sardar Patel). That may win them a few extra votes in Bengal.
Fun fact (#2): The Emergency that Arun Jaitley describes was led by Mrs Gandhi and supported by the Communists (CPI) on direct instructions from Moscow.
So here you have an example of a (worse than) Hitler collaborator working for a foreign pay-master.
This may well be the worst possible political gaali. Please mail in the check, Mr Jaitley.
Victor Mallet gives the back-story in the Financial Times
What is it about Adolf Hitler and India? I thought it was the British who were uniquely persistent in their post-war obsession with the Nazi dictator.
(Humourist Alan Coren entitled one of his books Golfing for Cats and put a Nazi flag on the cover because he had learned that golf, cats and Nazis were the three topics that sold well.)
Modi’s opponents on the left relish the comparison with the man responsible for the murder of 6m Jews because it hints at the darkest moment in the BJP leader’s past: the days in 2002 when hundreds of members of the Muslim minority were killed by Hindu rioters in Gujarat, soon after Modi became the state’s chief minister. Sitaram Yechury, a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), told the FT last year that Modi’s popularity was “chillingly reminiscent of the appeal that Hitler had among the German youth”.
Yet it is not only right-wingers in the BJP that are the targets of Hitler jibes. Arun Jaitley, one of the most senior BJP leaders and a likely cabinet minister in any Modi government, said it was Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother Indira Gandhi who was the real Hitler in India’s post-independence history.
“The comparison between Hitler and her was startling,” he said on his blog in a bitter response to Rahul Gandhi’s comments in Gujarat. Jaitley reminded his readers that he had spent 19 months in jail during the emergency and authoritarian rule imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 and read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in prison.
“Suspension of democracy, abrogation of civil liberties, detention of political opponents, suspension of democratic activity, abandonment of free press, absence of judicial independence and [vesting] of power in one person were features of Hitler’s regime. Each step had inspired Indira-ji’s internal Emergency. There was one basic difference between the two. Hitler did not promote a dynasty because he did not have one to promote.”
...But Subhas Chandra Bose, a radical Congress leader, cooperated with Nazi Germany and with Japan during the second world war and raised an army of liberation that was eventually defeated along with the Japanese.
I can add a personal footnote: When I first met our doctor in Delhi, I was surprised by his unusual first name and asked him whether his father had opposed colonial rule in the days of the British Raj. He said he had. The doctor’s name is Rommel.
regards
"Stalin....well no that is actually a live politician in India, and he only wants to finish off his elder brother."
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of crock! In the 40s, stalin has just finished off Hitler, and in 1950s. While as a school tenth grader (in my school) he started his carer on the Ant-Hindi agitation. When he graduated college, Ms. Gandhi tossed him into jail and broke a back bone using police. That makes it impossible for him to sit for more more than a few hours. He was the mayor for more than 3 terms. In any case, he ill not be the next CM, as he is slowly dying of cancer,.
Naming someone born iin 40s or 50s as stalin is not a joke. I knew many people looked up at Stalin and even Roosevelt in the 50s and 60s. I went to school with someone named Kennedy.
Stalin of Tamilnadu did not do 1/1000th of the damage of Nehru-Gandhi family. We do not get any laughs about Indira-Rajiv. What is so great about naming oneself Rahul and Rajiv, vis-a-vis Stalin.
People of the no-liberal age do not have any understanding of history. Stalin or Mao were the outcome of 1870s and 1890s. If they had been born in this century, they would not have been what they were.