How even Hitler can get lost in translation
Shock and horror crossed my face, paused briefly for dramatic effect, then retreated behind a diplomatic blankness. I pulled out my phone, as one does when civilisation trembles, and photographed the evidence. Later, my amused friend reconstructed the moment for me: in the thinning mist of a spotless Himalayan morning, I had encountered a signboard cheerfully welcoming travellers to “Hitler Tea Shop”.
Naturally, I shared this cultural thunderbolt on Facebook. A long-lost cousin, drawn from the genealogical undergrowth by the scent of absurdity, resurfaced to say hello, and laugh like a landslide. Then came the explanation. In the 1980s, this hill town had begun turning into an education hub, with a degree college, an ITI, and assorted temples of ambition. Students arrived in hordes, rented Pahadi homes, and began requiring the staples of scholarly life: tea, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and gossip. A quick-witted local opened a tea shop, spotted the expanding appetite, and prospered. The place was a ‘hit’. Why it was named after Hitler, however, remained wrapped in Himalayan fog.
I have since exported this story across continents, including to a roomful of flabbergasted Germans at a Hamburg conference. It appeared, somewhat alarmingly, in my talk on what Germany means to India, jostling for space with Dhyan Chand’s wizardry at the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s rumoured offer to him and his rejection of it, and Advani’s 1980s reflection that India needed a Bismarck.
The truth is that Hitler occupies a strange, unsettling corner in everyday Indian speech. In the West, rightly, he is the emblem of industrialised hatred. In India, “Hitler hai” may simply mean a tyrannical principal, boss, father, or bus conductor. “Bada Hitler hai tu?” is mockery. “Poora Hitler hai” can even be praise.
Perhaps Indians were too absorbed in their own freedom struggle when Hitler was setting the world on fire. Perhaps Bose’s Berlin chapter blurred the moral lines. Nehru, meanwhile, snubbed Nazis and visited Jewish shops. Even then, complications had begun. They have not entirely ended.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
