Cross with Hitler's Cross

Naming a restaurant after a perpetrator of genocide of 6 million Jews just cannot be justified or accepted.

Some obscure restaurant at Khargar, Navi Mumbai would not have lapped up so much publicity for itself if not for the title. What’s in a name you may ask? A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. A Sardarji interviewed by a news channel by saying ‘ What’s the big deal?’

If breeding Anti Semitic beliefs and wiping out an entire ethnic race from the face of this Earth is not a big deal, then what is? The holocaust was the most profound human tragedy in history. It really makes me wonder how these gory details did not occur in the minds of the promoters. They argue it was just another marketing game plan and had nothing to do with Hitler or the Nazis. Why don’t we then have eateries called ‘Osama Bin Laden’s den’ or ‘Godhra ki gosht’? What strikes me most is the casual attitude towards the situation.

The problem is not just as superficial as naming a restaurant. It is about a much more deep-rooted malady that we have in our society. Are we insensitive or ignorant?

Are we insensitive to the agony of the millions of victims to the barbaric crimes? Have we lost the ability to empathize with any of the sufferers? Time cannot be such a great healer that we become anesthised to atrocities. Our materialistic lives cannot entangle us into such an egoistic mode. Memories of the mass massacre cannot be masked so easily.

Are we ignorant to the statistics of the dead or the wounded in the Second World War? Did we not sit through history classes at school? Even best selling books like ‘Anne Frank’s diary’ and Oscar winning movies like ‘Life is beautiful’ do not seem to instill the gravity of the issue.

Freedom of expression means restaurateurs naming as they please and mayors still cutting the inaugural ribbon. Democracy also means freedom accompanied by responsibility and empathy. It took appeals from the Israeli and German governments to change that name.

We need an education system that would impart responsibility. Responsibility towards sentiments and sorrows of co inhabitants of this planet. Knowledge should churn out socially aware and accountable citizens.

Where knowledge is free…

… Into that heaven of freedom my father, let my country awake….


-- Rabindranath Tagore