It was a slightly warm and partially sunny morning in Berlin, my black winter jacket perhaps evincing an exaggerated belief in the weather predictions of the day. My mood was bleak though. I felt odd standing atop the very ground under which the most popularly hated man in history, the former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. It felt surreal that just a few hundred feet below where I was, the dreaded dictator had shot himself on April 30, 1945, along with his wife Eva Braun, effectively heralding the end of the cyclopean bloodfest that was World War II.
An estimated 50-60 million civilians and military personnel died, principally because of one man’s ideological fanaticism. In his diabolical pursuit of racial purity, hegemonic ambitions and his grotesque obsession for the annihilation of every breathing Jew in Germany and Europe, Hitler’s deadly purge would eviscerate 6 million innocent Jews, among them successful businesspeople, authors, artists, painters, athletes, etc.
I took a deep breath, and let the feeling sink in. Why do I recollect this dark period?
The return of stealthy fascism as a political curriculum is hot-button in India today; the circumlocution about the “world’s biggest democracy” notwithstanding. The calibrated strangulation of institutions, a muzzled press, relentless hounding of opposition parties, wanton violence against the oppressed, social media troll armies, the amplification of agitprop, it is all there.
While the demonisation of minorities (particularly Muslims) has been normalised with insouciant ease, the spectre of hate has risen beyond the boundaries of religious parameters. It has become visceral; uncontrolled anger over a sustained phase leads to violent manifestations, deep suspicions of the imaginary “other” force societies into an evil quagmire. The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland was not an overnight construction; it had been mentally visualised by the perpetrator of the world’s biggest genocide long before maybe, even earlier than when his Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party stormed into becoming the Third Reich in 1933.
Things don’t just happen, resentments, grudges and animosity are gradually stirred, gingerly stoked. The tragic death of teenager Aryan Mishra therefore must be told. Because it did not just happen. Because you might have missed it because our news cycle has expectedly jettisoned this gloomy story.
Aryan was out on a midnight drive on August 23, 2024 in a SUV with friends, when eerily, they found themselves being suddenly chased down the Delhi-Agra national highway by a speeding vehicle. It naturally made no sense to them. The menacing miscreants were cow vigilantes, who suspected Aryan and his fellow members of cattle-trafficking , which is statutorily banned. A nightmarish, dystopian 30 kilometre car chase ensued. But it did not end there. Aryan was shot dead. A young innocent, innocuous life was snuffed out by a single bullet.
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India moved on. Or pretended to. India was being vaccinated to accept this macabre ugliness as just another day in the life of a nearly US $ 4 trillion economy with emerging semi-conductor manufacturing capabilities.
The killers had an excuse: “We regret killing a Brahmin; we thought he was a Muslim”.
And yet to those who surreptitiously ignite the communal bonfires and watch the dance of death, Aryan’s killing was a brutal comeuppance moment. The chickens were coming home to roost; the Frankenstein’s monster had blurred vision, he could kill anyone. When the lynching deaths by revanchist mobs started to happen, they were mostly Muslims; Mohammed Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, Tabrez Ansari etc. Now a young boy, a Hindu, was being added to that tragic list.
There is a message there; hate proliferates, and it multiplies at a geometric rate. Things can go sideways. What if you, dear reader, get attacked by a mob while on a highway headed home if your car accidentally hits a cow or a buffalo? Or some vagabonds think your beard is a giveaway sign of a potential cow-heist accessory? Hate could be soon knocking at your door too.
Germany has accepted the nauseating truths of the Nazi massacres. The largest European economy today, its secular democracy is progressively liberal. It has strictly adhered to UN policies on refugee absorption, even as it has led to an extremist neo Nazi resuscitation. It has accepted the fact that societal redemption is founded on it coming to terms with its past, no matter how demonic, or distasteful. Thus, foreign tourists throng Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall, the Topography of Terror at the former SS Gestapo headquarters has a line of visitors silently reading the history of the Jewish pogrom.
It is the Holocaust Memorial (officially documented as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) spread over 4 acres right in the heart of the busy city centre, 2711 concrete black slabs of rectangular shape, resembling oversized coffins, which stands out as the symbol of atonement. It has grief written all over it. And remorse, regret, and shame. It is not just to remember the dead, but a courageous public admission of the horrific wrongdoings of the past. It serves as a reminder to us all of a history that should never again be repeated. Humanity is given a heads-up.
The Fuhrerbunker is just a few hundred meters away from the Holocaust memorial. There are no tourists here. There is a nondescript modest-sized signboard recapturing Hitler’s underground stay. The area has become a residential car-park, where I now stand on a warmish Berlin morning reflecting on a world that once was, wondering if my country will ever build a memorial for 1984? For 1992? For 2002? Or for those being killed now?
Sanjay Jha is a former national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress party. He also worked as a banker and an internet entrepreneur.
