MUMBAI, India — Puneet Sabhlok, 23 years old and a novice restaurateur, says he wanted a catchy café name to sell his $3 to $4 plates of crostini tonno, pear and ricotta salad and pannacotta.





Continue reading the main story








Last year, the government of Gujarat state, controlled by Hindu nationalists, introduced a new textbook for high- school history students that raised alarms around the world. "Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time by establishing a strong administrative set up," the textbook wrote, according to press accounts at the time. "He created the vast state of Greater Germany. He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people."

Prem Shankar Jha, one of the country's most influential political columnists, said the "romanticizing of Hitler" by a small group of Indians derived from a lack of indigenous examples of swashbuckling leaders who can make change happen.

Jha said he did not believe it had to do with the Holocaust. "It has to do with power, might, the man for whom the ordinary rules of mortality don't apply."

Then there is the swastika. Before it was Hitler's symbol, it belonged to ancient Hindu tradition. Many Indians believe that Hitler was endorsing their culture when he co-opted the symbol. So common is the perception that it prompted Deutsche Welle, Germany's international media outlet, to publish an essay last year entitled "The Indian View on Hitler - A Deep Misunderstanding."

"The fact that he used the term Aryan or the symbol of the Swastika does not mean that Hitler liked India," it wrote.

Ordinarily, India is prickly about allowing any sensibility to be offended. This is a nation that is likely to ban a movie or book because someone, somewhere, is hurt. So it is more likely to be a reflection of how absent knowledge of the Holocaust is from the Indian consciousness that this café came to be.

Sabhlok and a friend, Ajeesh Nambiar, said they had never learned much about Hitler's Germany. "We are not very strong in history," Nambiar said. "Hitler has never come to India, so we don't know about him."

"They say he killed Jewish people in gas chambers," Nambiar went on. "So many people are talking about it, so it must be true."

When asked how many Jews he thought were killed in the Holocaust, he said 600. Sabhlok revised it upward: 100,000.

For now, however, the restaurateur's focus is on the future, not the past. He must rename the café. From the blogosphere, which has pounced upon the restaurant, many suggestions have been forthcoming. Among them: Stalin Samosa Shop, Ayatollah Khomeini's Falafels, and Kim Jong's Juicy Juice.

But Sabhlok, apparently flummoxed by media attention he never wanted, has set a new rule for restaurant names.

"No more dictators," he said.

Continue reading the main story