Nirode K. Barooah Livres

Germany always enjoyed a natural sympathy from the Indians primarily because of Max Müller, that renowned Oxford professor of Comparative Philology of German descent who, while doing painstaking pioneering researches into ancient Indian scripture, called India „the very paradise on earth“, without ever visiting the country. In spite of this, because of the latent racism among the German commercial classes and the social aloofness of the German diplomats in India in order to avoid giving any chance of suspicion to the British rulers, a normal relation based on mutual trust and friendship between the Germans and the Indians remained a desideratum. Yet during the chequered period between the two World Wars, Germany was compelled to reckon with the growing self confidence of the Indians. Even Hitler had to appease the Indians in order to save the German trade in India. The book is a pioneering work on the extra-ordinary German Indian relations between 1922 and 1939 and based on German archival materials.

Why was Bismarck interested in England's problem «The Defence of India»? What was the part played by India in Berlin's diplomatic circles during the time of Imperialism? How did Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German Foreign Office react to growing Indian nationalism? How did Berlin become the center of Indian revolutionaries during the First World War? These are some of the questions dealt with in this book which is based mainly on documentary sources not previously used. Interesting and provocative material interpreted by a well informed author.