In May 1939, Walther Wüst, professor of ‘Aryan Studies’ at the University of Munich and an upwardly mobile officer of the notorious Nazi paramilitary organisation, the SS, appealed to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, to provide financial assistance to send an Indian man to India as an agent of Nazi Germany.
This agent was to conduct “cultural politics,” which denoted, in this context, both propaganda and espionage. Along with this appeal, Wüst submitted a positive “evaluation” of the person in question. The Sicherheitsdienst or SD, Nazi party`s powerful and sinister secret service controlled by the SS, also sent a favourable report of this prospective agent to Himmler, who then agreed to Wüst`s proposal. However, the scheme was stalled due to the onset of the Second World War.
The agent in question was Koodavuru Anantrama Bhatta (b. 1908), who represented, like few other Indians living in Nazi Germany, the convergence between knowledge of India and Nazi politics. “Pandit” Bhatta, as he came to be known, studied Sanskrit and Pali in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). From 1929 to 1932, he taught Sanskrit at Vidyalankar College near Colombo.
Bhatta arrived in Germany in 1932 with a scholarship provided jointly by the India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie (German Academy) and the Humboldt Foundation. He started a dissertation on “Shaivism in Sanskrit dramas” under Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, professor of Religious Studies and Indology at the University of Tübingen. Hauer, like Wüst, was an ardent Nazi and a member of the SS.
Though it is not clear whether Bhatta ever completed his PhD, Hauer considered him to be his “most capable student,” while Bhatta referred to Hauer as “my dear, revered Guru” in their correspondence. By 1944, Bhatta was passing on information on contemporary India to Hauer who used them to compose secret reports for the SS which developed an interest in this British colony.
The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism: Knowledge Providers and Propagandists in the ‘Third Reich’, by Baijayanti Roy, published by Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2024.
Bhatta, who mastered German well, regularly delivered public lectures on behalf of the Nazi organisation, “Strength through joy” (Kraft durch Freude) which sought to make ordinary Germans appreciate National Socialist ideals. Bhatta also lectured at meetings organised by the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) for boosting the morale of the soldiers.
He was considered an “exceptionally reliable” Indian by Alfred Rosenberg`s department which watched over the “spiritual and ideological indoctrination and education” of the Nazi party. Alfred Rosenberg was a member of the Nazi ruling elite and the chief ideologue of the Nazi party. His department gave permission to the Nazi party to deploy Bhatta occasionally for the German Volksbildungswerk, which also aimed to spread Nazi worldviews through public lectures.
During the war, probably through the mediation of the Karl Haushofer, professor of Geography at the University of Munich whose geopolitical views found acceptance among German right-wing circles, Bhatta published three articles in the Journal for Geopolitics (Zeitschrift für Geopolitik) which Haushofer edited.
After 1933, this prestigious journal had become increasingly responsive to the demands and interests of Nazi politics. The three articles by Bhatta dealt with aspects of contemporary India that were considered important by the Nazi regime. The essays were on: (i) Internal problems of India (July-December, 1939). (ii) British defence politics in India (January-June, 1940), (iii) Political scopes of different parties in India (July-December, 1940).
Published texts on India in Nazi party’s mouthpiece
Bhatta also published texts on India in German newspapers including the Nazi party`s mouthpiece, Völkischer Beobachter (‘The People’s Observer’) a rare feat for an Indian. A similar “achievement” of Bhatta was to publish an article in 1942 on “The youth movement in India” in the magazine “Will and Power” (Wille und Macht), the propaganda organ for Nazi youth edited by the “Reich Youth leader,” Baldur von Schirach.
Bhatta also propagated the virtues of Nazism in India, as evidenced in a long article written in Kannada and published in a south Indian journal, the date of publication of which is lost. The article, titled ‘Youth and Young women’s movement in today’s Germany,” glorified the Hitler Youth Movement.
Due to his reputation as a publicist approved by the Nazi regime, Bhatta was named the editor of the bilingual (English/German) Azad Hind magazine, which was published in Berlin from 1942 to 1944. It was the journal of the Free India Centre (FIC), established in Berlin jointly by the German Foreign Ministry and Subhas Chandra Bose, who had landed in the German capital in April 1941, seeking Germany’s help to drive the British from India.
Bhatta’s role as an editor of Azad Hind was largely representational, as the actual editing was done by other anti-colonial Indians from the FIC.
Notable among the few articles written by Bhatta for Azad Hind is one titled ‘Loyal India’ (9/10, 1942). This pro-German essay blamed the Indian “princes ruling their nominally independent states, as well as their less regal counterparts – the landholders and indigenous capitalists – for betraying their own people and their motherland in supporting Britain and fighting Germany.”
Another article, “Subhas Chandra Bose and his struggle,” published in 1943 (Issue 5/6) expressed reservations about the “compromising politics” of Gandhi and the right wing politics of the Indian National Congress and criticised them for failing to mobilise the masses for a violent overthrow of British rule. It is doubtful whether Bhatta actually wrote this article, which went against German wartime policy of praising both Gandhi and Bose.
Articles advocating Bose’s politics
Bhatta’s articles advocating Bose and his politics that appeared in the Nazified German press are likely to have been actually penned by him. In May 1942, for example, he wrote an article titled “Fighter for India: Subhas Chandra Bose`s path” for the Pariser Zeitung, an organ of the Nazi occupying authorities in France. This article scrupulously followed the parameters set by Nazi politics.
Similarly, Bhatta’s article on the celebration of Gandhi’s birthday by Bose and the FIC, published in the Völkischer Beobachter in October 1942, toed the German line. This event and such articles reflected the change in Germany’s propaganda policy towards India after Joachim von Ribbentrop became Germany`s Foreign Minister in February 1938. Ribbentrop was keen to use Indian nationalist aspirations for Germany’s benefit as war with Britain looked inevitable.
Under his influence German propaganda began to express its strategic support for the Indian anti-colonial movement led by Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. The aim was to destabilise the British Empire by stirring up political disturbances in its most profitable colony. Supporting Subhas Chandra Bose was another manifestation of this policy.
In 1943, a book titled Indien im Britischen Weltreich (India in the British Empire) appeared under Bhatta’s name as a part of a book series on India, published by the ‘Special Department India’ (Sonderreferat Indien or SRI) of the German Foreign Ministry. The SRI was set up in 1941 in response to the demands of Subhas Chandra Bose.
Publication of a series of books on India, both as a propaganda venture and to provide utilisable knowledge to German policy makers and press representatives, figured at the top of the SRI`s work plan. The eight books of the series were ostensibly authored by four Germans and four Indians.
Actually, however, the manuscripts of the Indians were rejected by the editor of the series, the Indophile Franz Josef Furtwängler, on the advice of the Indologist Ludwig Alsdorf. The manuscripts by the Indians were rewritten by Furtwängler, Alsdorf and the Indologist Hermann Beythan. This distrust was largely due to Alsdorf`s (and Furtwängler`s) racialised prejudices against Indians.
Nevertheless, it is a testimony of Bhatta`s political acumen that he capitalised on “his book” by sending a copy to Franz Alfred Six, high-ranking SS officer (Oberführer) and important functionary of the SD, in 1943. In the same year, Six had become the head of the “Cultural Political Section” of the Foreign Ministry which controlled the SRI.
Bhatta had met Six in 1939 through the mediation of Hauer. In his answer to Bhatta, Six claimed that he would read the book as soon as he could find time, adding that he had heard from his staff that “your book represents an especially valuable contribution to German-Indian collaboration,” thereby acknowledging the propagandistic worth of such politically useful knowledge.
Letter to Nehru
Bhatta’s last archival trace is an undated letter that he wrote from a farm in the French zone of occupation in south Germany to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947. In this letter, Bhatta requested the prime minister of independent India to include him in the Indian Embassy that was soon to open in Switzerland. Through the letter, Bhatta presented a highly manipulated version of his time in Germany.
He claimed that he consistently defended India in the German press, for which he was imprisoned by the Nazi authorities for two weeks in 1939. Only the threat of a hunger strike could induce the SS to release him. Bhatta`s letter makes it clear that the British knew about his collusion with various Nazi organisations and were searching for him. The Indian External Affairs Department replied tersely in a letter dated 1st April, 1947, that there was no vacancy in the Indian Embassy in Zurich.
(This is an essay based on The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism: Knowledge Providers and Propagandists in the ‘Third Reich’, by Baijayanti Roy, published by Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2024.)