“Hitlermania”
Nazism and the Holocaust in Indian History Textbooks
in Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society
Abstract
Recent surveys and reports document a growing phenomenon of “Hitlermania” in some parts of India. This article investigates whether the way in which National Socialism is presented in school education has encouraged this development or, on the contrary, has discouraged a positive valuation of the Nazis, including their leader. It analyzes curricula and a sample of school history textbooks published by state and central education boards, which have been used in Indian schools over the last two decades, focusing on their treatment of National Socialism and the Holocaust. While the results can be partly attributed to government interference in the school history curricula and in textbook writing, there appear to have been other factors at play, such as the social environment.
Contributor Notes
Basabi Khan Banerjee is a social scientist, independent researcher, and affiliated member of the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig. Email: bkhanbanerjee@gmail.com
Georg Stöber is the former head of the Department of Textbook and Conflict / Textbook and Society at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig. Email: georg.stoeber@web.de
