Hakenkreuz, Swastika and Crescent: The Religious Factor in Nazi Cultural Politics Regarding India

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines, on the basis of under-utilized archival materials, the uses of different religions in Nazi cultural politics aimed at India between 1933 and 1939. The goal of such politics was to generate respect for Nazi Germany and project it as sympathetic to the aspirations of various groups of Indians. Nazi propaganda used different tropes for the diverse politico-religious organizations it addressed. Aryanism was an effective vehicle of propaganda for Hindu nationalists and Hindu revivalists, as well as some Buddhists, whereas purported parallels between Islam and Nazism formed the core of the overtures towards Islamists. The chapter traces the dissemination of such propaganda through a cobweb-like Nazi network that existed in the Indian subcontinent, comprising Germans as well as Indians. The chapter demonstrates how Nazi cultural politics in India, which was inconsistent in the beginning, gradually became more coherent as it began to follow the dictates of Nazi foreign policy. As the war approached, religion-based propaganda gave way to strategic support for the secular anti-colonial movement led by the Indian National Congress.