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From: "Angie Eng" <angie_eng@hotmail.com>
To: mailing list
Subject: "Hitler Was A Great Man"
Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 11:34:15 -0500

HITLER WAS A GREAT MAN

I was waiting for my business(leisure) cards to be printed outside the printmaker shop. A 95-year old man in his ink-stained white dhoti hovered to arrange metal letters. It was a scene from Guttenberg’s day.

boy on push cart, Pushkar, Rajasthan

For the front design I chose the symbol of Ganesh, the chubby elephant symbolizing lord of new ventures, remover of obstacles and guardian of entrances who accidentally got his head lopped off and therefore received his elephant head. From a list of clip art I chose a Ganesh morphing into a swastika the ancient symbol of purity, not to be confused with the Nazi regime which gave it a 45 degree kick and adopted it. For the top right I chose a video camera symbol. In the middle I had printed above my name, ‘Where do you go?’, the most common phrase called out by locals to passing tourists, besides the even more common phrase, ‘Hello, one pen!’ 1


The colors of India are the most vibrant in the world.

The one hour wait became 4 which I spent drawing street life. I had a sketchbook the size of a quarter on which I was drawing a sign mounted above a door. It was a swastika with the palm of the hand beneath it. It belonged to the printer's friend standing over my shoulder watching me. He was a Jain, the smallest Buddhist sect originating in India. He explained to me, ‘the swastik represents purity and cleanliness in the house(no drinking, drugs, prostitution, etc.) and the palm, represents protection.’ His friend handed me the metal sign as a token of our new friendship.

Me as a Rajasthani bride

It was shocking at first, being a Westerner and seeing so many swastikas painted above doors, in advertisements, on water bottles, on stationary , on saris. The swastika for Western eyes automatically goes hand in hand with the West's holocaust. This historical atrocity caused such mass fear that even schizophrenics tend to hallucinate Nazi warplanes while personifying Hitler. Here in India, there are more swastikas than Om’s, unlike the impression of the east from the yoga centers in our cities.

Scenes of the Harijan/Untouchable class are everywhere.

It is even more shocking to hear locals say, ‘Hitler was a great man.’ I repeated his name, over enunciating the syllables to clarify whether or not we were referring to the same guy. A bit baffled, I paused debating on whether or not I should proceed with what would have been a lengthy debate. No, never mind. Perhaps, they are mislead by the common symbol Hitler chose to represent the Nazi regime, or maybe they agree with the purity of race. (The latter is doubtful.) I wondered what exactly their history taught. Whatever the case, I continued to ask the Indians I met from the people on the train, my hotel manager, the Rajput, our camel guide, etc. Although some of them paused to think of the ‘correct’ answer, really hard and said, "I don't think he was good", most of them said, ‘I think, he was a great man.’

One can enjoy the moment and actually an entire lifetime just being. These guys squat everyday all day in a beautiful village, Mahansar in the Shekwati region of Rajasthan. All the houses are painted with frescoes inside and out to tell stories of the outside world that women were forbidden to enter.

Women squat too. But here they are waiting for the bus like me.

1. When travelers encounter local people they oftentimes give gifts/trinkets to them. Pens happen to be a favorite gift of choice and therefore when children see foreigner’s they immediately ask for ‘one pen’. Many guidebooks recommend that if you give presents then it is better to give them to the ‘chief’ or ‘head’ of the household/village to disperse the gifts to avoid ‘spoiling’ the locals.