REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

442
Remembrance in Time
In the meantime, Nehru received a short letter from Mohandas Ghandi. In this notice,
Ghandi ironized Chamberlain’s famous words: “What a peace at the cost of honour.” 15
The attitude brought forward by Gandhi, Nehru and the majority of the Indian National
Congress was strongly criticized by right-wing politicians in India. Among them was the
main protagonist of ethnic Hindu nationalism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966),
who since 1937 was the president of the Hindu Mahatshaba organization. For Savarkar
who was in close contact with Nazi officials, “Germany was perfectly justified in uniting
the Austrian and Sudeten Germans under the German Flag”. 16 He called Czechoslovakia
a “patchwork” nation, where the Sudeten Germans had been made “a mess of” by being
coerced to live together with Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Hungarians. 17 As it turned out,
Savarkar and his radical movement was in close relation with the NSDAP which kept a
local cell even at Bombay. Similar statements came from representatives of the Moslem
League in India which compared their own fate to that of Sudeten Germans. This was
their reaction to the beginning cooperation of many reasonable Moslem politicians within
the Indian National Congress. As we know from today’s perspective, the idea to separate
Hindu and Moslem territories gained power during World War II, leading to the creation
of Pakistan and Bangladesh shortly after Indian independence.
* * *
In this short paper I could only give a little idea of how democratic solidarity united
people from a very different geographic and cultural background in the face of totalitarian
oppression of a sovereign state and a democratic system shortly before the outbreak of
World War II.
In a period where Europe is again facing a deep crisis, a lack of mutual confidence and
solidarity, it might be sometimes helpful to take a look at how our continent is perceived
from outside. Widespread stereotypes often dating back to a very remote history seem to
impede our awareness of reality as far as outside standpoints are concerned. Two
examples are contemporary islamophobia and the non-acceptance of refugees from the
so-called Third World. The European continent has gained a lot in terms of liberty,
economic growth and social security since the end of World War II in 1945 and the end
of communism in Eastern Europe after 1989. The future of our continent will very much
depend on the question whether Europe will be able to open its eyes beyond the regional
issues. If we look at these days’ newspapers, it seems that the authoritarian politics
imposed by Brussels and Berlin to smaller member-states of the European Union
dominate the public discourse. While this interior disintegration process is going on,
15
Quoted in Rajmohan Gandhi: Gandhi. The Man, his People, and the Empire, Cambridge 2007,
p. 400.
16
Quoted in Chetan Bhatt: Hindu Nationalism. Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths, Oxford–
New York 2001, p. 107. – Cf. Jan Kuhlmann: Subhas Chandra Bose und die Indienpolitik der
Achsenmächte, Berlin 2003, p. 71.
17
Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, p. 106.