Hitler-themed café in India spurs outrage

MUMBAI -- Puneet Sabhlok, 23 years old and a novice restaurateur, says he wanted a catchy café name to sell his $3 to $4 plates of crostini tonno, pear and ricotta salad, and pannacotta. So he went with Hitler's Cross.

He put a swastika in the logo. ``Hitler is a catchy name. Everyone knows Hitler," he explained in an interview. The café opened this week in a remote suburb of Mumbai (formerly called Bombay) . At first, business was brisk. But as word spread, revulsion followed. Before long, India's Jews, joined by diplomats from Israel and Germany and the US Anti-Defamation League in New York, were working to shut the place down.

Abraham Foxman, the US Anti-Defamation League's national director, issued a statement saying the restaurant ``denigrates the memory of the victims and does a dangerous disservice to the Mumbai community by downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust."

Yesterday, after meeting with a Jewish community leader here, Sabhlok agreed to rechristen the restaurant. The pannacotta will stay, the swastika will go.

``I never wanted to promote Hitler," Sabhlok said. ``I just wanted to promote my restaurant."

Indeed, the episode was treated in the local media as a cheap publicity stunt. But it seems also to reflect a curious and growing fascination with Hitler in a country whose pluralist traditions would appear to make it unlikely soil for Nazi ideas.

``This is part of a bigger problem," Daniel Zonshine, the Israeli consul general in Mumbai, said in a telephone interview. ``India was far away from the Second World War. I don't think that many refugees from Europe came to India during the war. So the knowledge that people suffered is less here than in other countries. I definitely see it as part of my job to try to do something about that."

``Mein Kampf" is a hot seller at many Indian streetside book stalls. Newspaper surveys have found significant numbers of Indian college students rate Hitler as a n model for an Indian leader.

Before the swastika was Hitler's symbol, it belonged to Hindu tradition. Many Indians believe Hitler was endorsing their culture when he co-opted the symbol.

Sabhlok has set a new rule for restaurant names. ``No more dictators," he said.