At The Crossroads of Anti-Colonialism, Axis Propaganda and International Communism

Abstract

The bi-lingual (English/German) periodical Azad Hind/Freies Indien (‘Free India’) was published in Berlin from 1942 till at least 1944. It was the mouthpiece of the Free India Centre, established in Berlin by the Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose with the help of the German Foreign Ministry, to conduct diasporic anti-colonial politics. Based mainly on unutilized archival material, this article focusses on the following facets of this magazine: (i) its role in synthesizing Indian anti-colonialism with Nazi propaganda and Axis military goals. (ii) intersections between the knowledge production for the magazine and the dynamic political trajectories of the Indians who produced such knowledge, particularly the expression of certain leftist visions and ideals in the magazine by a number of Marxist anti-colonialist Indians. Notably, the Nazis displayed remarkable pragmatism in suspending their ideological antagonism to all forms of leftist politics as far as Azad Hind was concerned.