Purandare's volume is extremely readable... Finally, someone has written the decisive book.
-C. CHRISTINE FAIR, Professor, Security Studies, Georgetown University
About the Book
Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, is a perennial bestseller in India, with even street-side bookstalls prominently displaying stacks of it. The name 'Hitler' anathema almost everywhere else in the world is tossed about casually in the Indian subcontinent, not infrequently invoked in praise. Many Indians still harbour the notion that the Führer was a friend of the Indian people and had extended wholehearted support to their freedom struggle. To journalist Vaibhav Purandare, this clearly suggested that Indians continued to be largely unaware of the German dictator's views on India, in spite of the fact that they are unambiguously expressed in his own writings. This lacuna spurred him on to delve into the archives in Germany, India and elsewhere.
The result of Purandare's research is this comprehensive and painstaking portrait and analysis of Hitler's outlook on India and its people, his opinion of their struggle against the British Raj, and his take on Indian history, culture and civilisation. Also within these pages are surprising details of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's entanglement with the Reich, the experience of other Indians living in Nazi Germany, the mission that Hitler sent to the Himalayas in search of 'pure-blood Aryans', and a number of other little-known historical nuggets. Accessible and rich in detail, Hitler and India is the very first examination of what India meant to a figure who, perplexingly, remains quite alive in the country.
About the Author
Vaibhav Purandare is the author of Savarkar: The True Story of the Father of Hindutva, Bal Thackeray and the Rise of the Shiv Sena and Sachin Tendulkar: A Definitive Biography. He works as a senior editor with The Times of India.
Acknowledgement
The research and the writing of this book took nearly The ten years, what with the unearthing of sources, the tracing of much obscure material in Germany, UK and India, the several translations required from the original German and the fact that I was carrying out my daily responsibilities at my workplace while working on the project and also, for some time, researching another book which I finished well before this one. Papers, periodicals, books, official Nazi, German and British correspondence and the correspondence of several leading Indian political figures too had to be looked into.
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