The Bengali Society of German Culture (Bangiya Jarman Vidya Samsad) in German Archives

Table of Con­tents
Intro­duc­tion  | Archival Sources  | Back­ground  | Ear­ly years (1933–1936)  | Eugen­ics, Hin­du revival­ism, Nazi pol­i­tics (1936–1939)  | Con­clu­sion  | Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Introduction

The Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture (Bangiya Jar­man Vidya Sam­sad) was estab­lished by the Ger­manophile and poly­math intel­lec­tu­al Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949) in Cal­cut­ta in 1933. The aim of this Soci­ety, as stat­ed in its pro­grammes, was “to car­ry on and pro­mote among our coun­try­men stud­ies and inves­ti­ga­tions relat­ing to Ger­man insti­tu­tions, sci­ences and arts.” The main activ­i­ty of this soci­ety was to orga­nize pub­lic lec­tures on var­i­ous sub­jects relat­ed to Ger­many. Its activ­i­ties end­ed with the onset of WWII.

 In its aims and objec­tives, the Ben­gali Soci­ety was sim­i­lar to the “Ger­man Soci­ety” of the Ali­garh Mus­lim Uni­ver­si­ty (AMU), which was estab­lished in 1932 by the Ger­man ori­en­tal­ist schol­ar Otto Spies, who joined the Ara­bic Depart­ment of the AMU in the same year, and Sat­tar Kheiri, the Ger­man lec­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty. All the mem­bers of the Ger­man Soci­ety belonged to dif­fer­ent fac­ul­ties of the AMU (Roy forth­com­ing 2023). Unlike the Ger­man Soci­ety of the AMU, how­ev­er, the Ben­gali Soci­ety was not for­mal­ly affil­i­at­ed to any Uni­ver­si­ty though its founder Benoy Kumar Sarkar was a pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta. The mem­bers of this Soci­ety were also not lim­it­ed to academia.

In the fol­low­ing sec­tion, I will briefly trace Sarkar’s role as an inter­me­di­ary between an expand­ing Nazi net­work that evolved in India and the indige­nous edu­cat­ed elite in Cal­cut­ta. The core of this Nazi net­work com­prised a unit of the Nazi par­ty that exist­ed in India from 1932. Most mem­bers of this unit were the Ger­man employ­ees of the Ger­man com­mer­cial firms oper­at­ing in India. After 1933, the Ger­man Con­sulates in India also joined the Nazi net­work, as the tra­di­tion­al diplo­mats were increas­ing­ly replaced with Nazi par­ty mem­bers. There were also a num­ber of Indi­an and Ger­man indi­vid­u­als in India who belonged to the Nazi net­work with­out offi­cial­ly join­ing the Nazi par­ty. Benoy Sarkar was one such indi­vid­ual (Roy forth­com­ing 2023).

This dis­cus­sion is nec­es­sary to sit­u­ate the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture in its prop­er polit­i­cal con­text. Fol­low­ing this, I will enu­mer­ate on the archival sources relat­ing to the Soci­ety that I have found in Ger­many. Final­ly, I will pro­vide a short account of the activ­i­ties of the Ben­gali Soci­ety, which, to my knowl­edge, oper­at­ed only in Calcutta.

An impor­tant com­po­nent of the Nazi net­work was the India Insti­tute of the Deutsche Akademie (DA), a sup­pos­ed­ly non-polit­i­cal organ­i­sa­tion estab­lished in Munich in 1925.  The declared aim of the DA was to dis­sem­i­nate Ger­man lan­guage and cul­ture in for­eign lands. How­ev­er, it increas­ing­ly con­duct­ed cul­tur­al pol­i­tics in the form of pro­pa­gan­da and espi­onage for the Nazi regime in dif­fer­ent coun­tries includ­ing India, South-East Europe, Great Britain, Amer­i­ca, South Africa, Chi­na, Japan, and Thai­land, as the jour­nals of the DA stat­ed. Benoy Kumar Sarkar’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazi net­work, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the DA, formed the back­drop to the foun­da­tion of the Society.

Archival Sources

Main Archives of the Bavarian State (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv or BayHsta) Munich

The jour­nals of the DA, which are avail­able at the Bay­erisches Haupt­staat­sarchiv (BayH­s­ta), occa­sion­al­ly report­ed on the activ­i­ties of the Society.

Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv or BArch) Berlin

A num­ber of bul­letins con­tain­ing details like the list of mem­bers and advi­sors, pro­grammes organ­ised by the Soci­ety as well as reports on them are housed in the Fed­er­al Archives (Bun­de­sarchiv or BArch) inBer­lin under the sig­na­ture R57/10712.

Political Archive of the German Foreign Ministry (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts or PA AA) Berlin

This archive has mate­ri­als relat­ing to a pro­gramme from 1938 as well as an announce­ment of the Society’s plans in the sec­tion Poli­tis­che Beziehun­gen Indi­ens zu Deutsch­land, Pol VII, sig­na­ture R10477.

This list of archives does not claim to be exhaus­tive. For the pur­pose of pre­sent­ing a coher­ent and com­pre­hen­sive nar­ra­tive, I have used rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion from colo­nial sur­veil­lance records held by the Nation­al Archives of India, New Del­hi (NAI), and West Ben­gal State Archives, Kolkata (WBSA).

Background

Benoy Kumar Sarkar belonged to an elite group of nation­al­ist intel­lec­tu­als of Ben­gal who were par­tic­u­lar­ly recep­tive towards cer­tain ideas asso­ci­at­ed with Ger­man phi­los­o­phy and Ger­man nation­al­ism. These ideas were fil­tered to them through cul­tur­al exchanges with Britain (Sar­tori 2010: 79). Sarkar and oth­ers of his ilk saw Ger­many as a vic­tim of the British Empire, which nev­er­the­less suc­ceed­ed in reju­ve­nat­ing under Hitler’s lead­er­ship. To Sarkar, Ger­many became a pro­jec­tion of what India should have aspired to be.

Sarkar’s attempts to coa­lesce ele­ments of Ger­man intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tions and Nazi pol­i­tics with his vision of India’s past, present and future are best known through his (in)famous book The Hitler State: A Polit­i­cal, Eco­nom­ic and Social Remak­ing of the Ger­man peo­ple, pub­lished in 1934. The book remains par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable for the oft-quot­ed phrase that Hitler com­bined “the moral ide­al­ism of a Vivekanan­da mul­ti­plied by the iron stren­u­ous­ness of a Bis­mar­ck” (Sarkar 1934:8).

This quote rep­re­sents Sarkar’s attempt to link the “reju­ve­na­tion” of Ger­many with Hin­du revival­ism embod­ied by the ascetic Ramkr­ish­na (1836–1886) and his west­ern edu­cat­ed dis­ci­ple, Vivekanan­da (1863–1902). Sarkar also tried to estab­lish that the “Ramkr­ish­na Vivekanan­da com­plex” was car­ry­ing on the intel­lec­tu­al lega­cy of Johann Got­tlieb Fichte’s ide­al of “the mind’s dom­i­na­tion over the world” (Sar­tori 2010:80). The Ben­gali Soci­ety was a fur­ther man­i­fes­ta­tion of Sarkar’s attempts to inter­pret aspects of (Nazi) Ger­many and con­nect them to his views of India’s “glo­ri­ous” (Hin­du) past and to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its future resuscitation.

The Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture was, how­ev­er, not just an expres­sion of Sarkar´s per­son­al quest. Sarkar who was flu­ent in Ger­man, had vis­it­ed Ger­many sev­er­al times and formed friend­ships with influ­en­tial Ger­man intel­lec­tu­als, like the geo-politi­cian Karl Haushofer (1869–1946). The lat­ter was a con­ser­v­a­tive nation­al­ist who enjoyed some respect among lead­ing Nazi politi­cians. Haushofer was also one of the founders of the DA’s India Insti­tute, estab­lished in 1928 in Munich. The India Insti­tute pro­vid­ed stipends to Indi­an stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als to study and work in Ger­many (Roy 2021). The aim was to influ­ence them enough to con­duct pro­pa­gan­da for Ger­many in India, or at least to remain sym­pa­thet­ic to the coun­try. Through Haushofer´s medi­a­tion, the India Insti­tute invit­ed Sarkar to be a guest pro­fes­sor at the Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­my, Munich, in 1930–31 (Thier­felder 1937:9).

After the Nazis assumed pow­er in 1933, the DA (and the India Insti­tute) embarked on the ven­ture to con­form to the new regime’s expec­ta­tions. Sarkar took upon him­self the task of pro­mot­ing the DA and the “New Ger­many” in India in dif­fer­ent ways (Roy 2021). The estab­lish­ment of the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture in Cal­cut­ta was a part of such efforts.

The DA dis­played sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in the Ben­gali Soci­ety. In Octo­ber 1933, Mit­teilun­gen, the jour­nal of the DA, announced the estab­lish­ment of the Soci­ety in Cal­cut­ta, adding that its main objec­tive was to orga­nize lec­tures on Ger­many and “Ger­man intel­lec­tu­al life”. The jour­nal fur­ther announced that Indi­an stu­dents who had com­plet­ed their dis­ser­ta­tions in Ger­many are among the Society’s advi­sors (Mit­teilun­gen, Octo­ber 1933: 392). How­ev­er, a list of mem­bers and advi­sors of the Soci­ety found at the Fed­er­al Archives in Berlin shows that the Ben­gali Soci­ety includ­ed not only schol­ars and pro­fes­sion­als who had stud­ied in Ger­many, but also oth­er mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed elite of Cal­cut­ta (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

Not long after the foun­da­tion of the Ben­gali Soci­ety, the DA made Sarkar an hon­orary mem­ber of the India Insti­tute, for “his great achieve­ments in cul­tur­al work” (Mit­teilun­gen Decem­ber 1933: 533). This “reward­ing” of Sarkar points to an exchange of polit­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and cul­tur­al resources between Sarkar and the DA, which pro­gres­sive­ly became the mouth­piece of the Nazi state in India.

Early years (1933–1936)

Benoy Kumar Sarkar was the direc­tor of the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture and Naren­dra Nath Law, an entre­pre­neur and the edi­tor of the mag­a­zine The Indi­an His­tor­i­cal Quar­ter­ly, was its Pres­i­dent (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

Ben­gali intel­lec­tu­als with nation­al­ist lean­ings, who looked towards Ger­many as a mod­el of progress were pre­ferred as mem­bers and invit­ed guests. One of the vice pres­i­dents of the Soci­ety was Biren Das Gup­ta, the direc­tor of a mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­ny called Indo-Swiss Trad­ing Co. Das Gup­ta was known to the British sur­veil­lance as a rad­i­cal anti-colo­nial­ist who went to Berlin dur­ing WWI and became involved in spread­ing anti-British pro­pa­gan­da under the aegis of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment (WBSA: IB File 355–41).  Notably, most meet­ings of the mem­bers of the Soci­ety were held at the office of the Indo-Swiss Trad­ing Co. The venue of the pub­lic lec­tures, which were held pri­mar­i­ly in the evenings, was a com­mu­ni­ty hall called the Bud­dhist Hall in Col­lege Square, cen­tral Cal­cut­ta (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).  

Anoth­er mem­ber of the Ben­gali Soci­ety was Dr. Suhrit Mitra, who had com­plet­ed his PhD in Leipzig in 1926 on exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy (Hart­nack 2022:193). He deliv­ered at least two pub­lic lec­tures, one of which was on cur­rent research in the field of exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy in Ger­many. It was deliv­ered on 21^st Novem­ber 1933, at the Bud­dhist Hall. The oth­er lec­ture on “Gestalt The­o­ry in Ger­man Psy­chol­o­gy” was held on 26^th Sep­tem­ber 1936, at the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta. The audi­ence includ­ed Girindrasekhar Bose, the pio­neer of psy­cho­analy­sis in India, and Bid­han Chan­dra Roy, the renowned physi­cian and nation­al­ist politi­cian (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). This is an indi­ca­tion of the pres­tige that the Ben­gali Soci­ety enjoyed among the aca­d­e­m­ic as well as polit­i­cal elite of Calcutta.

The sec­ond lec­ture was also attend­ed by Horst Pohle, the Ger­man lec­tor sent by the DA to Cal­cut­ta in 1934. Pohle was asked to be present at all the pro­grammes of the Ben­gali Soci­ety by Franz Thier­felder, the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the DA, in a let­ter writ­ten in 1935. Thier­felder claimed that the pres­ence of the Ger­man lec­tor was essen­tial to sig­ni­fy the DA’s encour­age­ment to the Soci­ety (NAI: Home Polit­i­cal. EW 1941. NA-F-10–103). Pohle, a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty, was known to the colo­nial sur­veil­lance as a Nazi pro­pa­gan­dist and agent (Roy 2021).

In a pro­gres­sive ges­ture, the Soci­ety includ­ed a few women as well. Maitray­ee Basu Chat­ter­jee, a prac­tic­ing physi­cian who had received a schol­ar­ship from the DA to study med­i­cine at Munich was list­ed as an advi­sor. The list of mem­bers also includ­ed “Mrs. Sushama Sen­gup­ta, M.A.” who was the prin­ci­pal of a girls’ school in Cal­cut­ta (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

The Soci­ety some­times invit­ed “main­stream” politi­cians to deliv­er lec­tures. One such guest was Humayun Kabir, a writer and a mem­ber of the Indi­an Nation­al Con­gress. He spoke on the polit­i­cal­ly innocu­ous sub­ject of “Kant and mod­ern thought” on 13^th Sep­tem­ber 1935.

Nev­er­the­less, the Society’s main agen­da seems to have been to pro­vide plat­forms to per­sons con­nect­ed in diverse ways to the Nazi polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. For exam­ple, on 16^th Sep­tem­ber 1933 Her­bert Richter, the Ger­man Vice Con­sul of Cal­cut­ta, spoke on “New Ger­many” (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). The con­tents of the lec­ture were pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar to anoth­er speech titled “Ele­ments of New Ger­many” that Richter deliv­ered around the same time at the Vish­wa Bharati Uni­ver­si­ty (Bhat­tacharya 1990: IX). This speech was replete with Nation­al Social­ist pro­pa­gan­da like the “neces­si­ty of pre­serv­ing the puri­ty of Aryan blood,” a mea­sure which, claimed Richter, “must be com­pre­hen­si­ble to my Indi­an friends” (Framke 2021: 115).

On 27^th March 1934, the Soci­ety orga­nized a lec­ture by Heinz Nitzschke, the pre­de­ces­sor of the afore­men­tioned Horst Pohle. Nitzschke’s lec­ture was on “Three Ger­man Soci­ol­o­gists: Fer­di­nand Tön­nies, Hans Frey­er and Leopold von Wiese” (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). Among the soci­ol­o­gists in ques­tion, Frey­er and von Wiese tried to con­form to Nazi pol­i­tics in dif­fer­ent ways (Klinge­mann 1996). Accord­ing to a colo­nial sur­veil­lance report, Nitzschke, a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty, reg­u­lar­ly deliv­ered lec­tures on Nazi Ger­many and met Indi­an nation­al­ists at Calcutta’s Young Men’s Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion where he taught Ger­man as well (NAI: EAD File No. 665‑X\38. P11, C3).

The Soci­ety invit­ed one of its mem­bers, Bata Krish­na Ghosh, an erst­while stipend hold­er of the DA who taught Ger­man at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta, to lec­ture on “Recent Ger­man research­es in Lin­guis­tics” on 20^th April 1934 (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). Ghosh hap­pened to be the head of the stu­dent sec­tion of the Soci­ety, which Sarkar man­aged to start at this Uni­ver­si­ty (WBSA. IB File No. 355–41.Sl.183). A sur­veil­lance report from 1939 sus­pect­ed Ghosh of being sym­pa­thet­ic towards the Axis (NAI: Home Pol. EW-1939, NA-F-93kw). The same report also men­tioned Dr. R. Ahmed, Prin­ci­pal of the Cal­cut­ta Den­tal Col­lege and Hos­pi­tal and a Vice Pres­i­dent of the Ben­gali Soci­ety, as well as Prof. Baneswar Dut­ta from the Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, Jadavpur (now Jadavpur Uni­ver­si­ty), an hon­orary mem­ber of the Soci­ety, as being “pro-Axis”. Both are list­ed as office hold­ers in a pam­phlet of the Ben­gali Soci­ety (BArch Berlin: R57/10217).

The lec­tures were often accord­ed sym­bol­ic impor­tance by the Ger­man polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. For instance, a pub­lic lec­ture organ­ised by the Soci­ety on 15^th Decem­ber 1934 on “Engi­neer­ing and indus­tri­al Ger­many”, was deliv­ered by Jatin­dra Nath Basu, an erst­while stipend hold­er of the DA as well as an advis­er of the Soci­ety. He was also a pro­fes­sor at the Col­lege of Engi­neer­ing, Jadavpur. The lec­ture was attend­ed by the Ger­man Con­sul and Vice Con­sul of Cal­cut­ta, as well as by Horst Pohle (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). This lec­ture was lat­er pub­lished in Ger­man as a book­let and sent to Sarkar from Berlin in 1939 (WBSA IB File No. 355–41 SL 183).

Eugenics, Hindu revivalism, Nazi politics (1936–1939)

Around 1936, the lec­tures orga­nized by the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture start­ed to focus increas­ing­ly on sub­jects asso­ci­at­ed with Nation­al Social­ism. These lec­tures sought to dis­pel the anti-Nazi views that were fre­quent­ly artic­u­lat­ed in the Indi­an Press. As the Mit­teilun­gen stat­ed in 1937, “unfriend­ly atti­tude towards Ger­many” per­sist­ed in cer­tain Indi­an cir­cles and Indi­an mag­a­zines often pub­lished “ill-dis­posed arti­cles about today’s Ger­many” (Mit­teilun­gen April 1937: 87). The jour­nal added that it was for­tu­nate that Benoy Kumar Sarkar con­tin­ued his work of spread­ing the truth about con­tem­po­rary Ger­many through his Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture. Mit­teilun­gen then men­tioned a num­ber of lec­tures which osten­si­bly aimed to “spread the truth” in 1936. They were on “Win­ter­hil­f­swerk or Win­ter Relief Mea­sures in Ger­many” (Benoy Kumar Sarkar), “Avi­a­tion in the Ger­man Reich” (Biren Roy) and “Eugenic Research in Ger­many” (Pra­ful­la Chan­dra Biswas). The sum­maries of the talks can be found in the Fed­er­al Archives in Berlin (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

Among the speak­ers, the avi­a­tor Biren Roy was con­sid­ered to be “anti-British” by the colo­nial sur­veil­lance, which also alleged that he received finan­cial remu­ner­a­tion from the Nazi par­ty in India for con­duct­ing pro-Ger­man pro­pa­gan­da (WBSA File 236–39. Part 1). Roy spoke glow­ing­ly of the advances made in Ger­many in the sphere of aviation.

Anoth­er speak­er, the anthro­pol­o­gist Pra­ful­la Chan­dra Biswas, a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta, had stud­ied at the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute (KWI) in Berlin with a fel­low­ship from the Alexan­der von Hum­boldt Foun­da­tion, which often co-oper­at­ed with the DA (Roy 2021). His research guide was the direc­tor of the KWI, the “race hygien­ist” Eugen Fis­ch­er, who pro­vid­ed schol­ar­ly legit­i­ma­cy to Nazi racial pol­i­tics (Krön­er 2005:403).

The syn­op­sis of Biswas’ lec­ture from 23^rd Decem­ber 1936 reveals that he tried to asso­ciate the sub­ject to a “Hin­du past” by claim­ing that Manu’s laws had a eugeni­cist dimen­sion. He then went on to endorse the law passed in Ger­many in July 1933 “for the pre­ven­tion of hered­i­tary defec­tive prog­e­ny”. This noto­ri­ous law led to the forced ster­il­iza­tion of thou­sands and lat­er to sys­tem­at­ic mur­ders (Euthana­sia) of many who were con­sid­ered “unwor­thy” of liv­ing (Hed­wig and Pet­ter 2017).

Benoy Kumar Sarkar, in his intro­duc­tion to the lec­ture by Biswas, also attempt­ed to relate Hin­du con­ven­tions to eugen­ics by claim­ing that the “tra­di­tion­al Hin­du ideas of exogamy and endogamy are at bot­tom eugenic” (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). In his own lec­ture on Win­ter­hil­f­swerk deliv­ered on 14^th May 1936, Sarkar expressed the neces­si­ty of India to emu­late “the orga­nized char­i­ty of the Ger­man peo­ple under state aus­pices, like the Win­ter Help Pro­gram of the Hitler regime” (Mit­teilun­gen April 1937:87). He glossed over the fact that this pro­gramme was pri­mar­i­ly a pro­pa­gan­dis­tic ven­ture con­duct­ed by the Nazi gov­ern­ment for help­ing only the “racial­ly and polit­i­cal­ly desir­ables” (Vor­län­der 1986: 341–380).

It is notable that the pres­i­dent of the pro­gramme fea­tur­ing Sarkar’s lec­ture was the monk Swa­mi Shar­vadanan­da from the Ramkr­ish­na Mis­sion. The audi­ence com­prised monks from this order as well as mem­bers of the Ger­man con­sulate, includ­ing the Con­sul, Eduard von Selzam (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). This occa­sion was not just a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Sarkar’s agen­da of herald­ing a cross-fer­til­iza­tion of Nazi tenets with his visions of Hin­duism; the event which took place at the Bud­dhist Hall also pro­vid­ed a con­tact zone in which the pur­vey­ors of Hin­du revival­ism and Nazi pol­i­tics could interact.

The Ramkr­ish­na Mis­sion was inter­est­ed in cul­ti­vat­ing Ger­man intel­lec­tu­als, some of whom were also attract­ed to its mes­sages of spir­i­tu­al­ism. In March 1934, the Mission’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives wrote to the For­eign Min­istry in Berlin ask­ing for help in dis­sem­i­nat­ing its Eng­lish lan­guage jour­nal Prabud­dha Bhara­ta (Awak­ened India) among Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties (PA-AA R122626). The jour­nal already enjoyed some pop­u­lar­i­ty among some Ger­man schol­ars asso­ci­at­ed with the DA, which reg­u­lar­ly received it (Roy forth­com­ing 2023).

Anoth­er event orga­nized by the Soci­ety on 7^th April 1937 at the usu­al venue, the Bud­dhist Hall, entailed five monks from the Ramkr­ish­na Mis­sion read­ing out the papers pre­sent­ed by five Ger­man philoso­phers at an inter­na­tion­al sem­i­nar held in March, on the occa­sion of the cen­te­nary of Ramakrishna’s birth (BA Berlin: R57/10712).

Benoy Kumar Sarkar also admired the Four-Year Plans ini­ti­at­ed by Her­mann Göring from Jan­u­ary 1937. In a lec­ture titled “Eco­nom­ic aspects of the Ger­man Four Year Plan”, deliv­ered on 31^st July 1937, Sarkar waxed elo­quent on “the ascend­ing curves of Ger­man econ­o­my since the estab­lish­ment of the Nazi regime in 1933” and the Four-Year Plan that fol­lowed (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

A sur­veil­lance record from 1938 report­ed that in 1936 and 1937, the Ger­man Con­sulate in Cal­cut­ta was pro­vid­ing finan­cial aid to “the local Indo-Ger­man insti­tute run by Benoy Sarkar for train­ing young Ben­galis on pro-Nazi lines”, refer­ring in all like­li­hood to the stu­dent sec­tion of the Ben­gali Soci­ety estab­lished by Sarkar and head­ed by Batakr­ish­na Ghosh (NAI: EAD F.No. 665‑X\38. Part II, P.9). On 14^th May 1939, the British-run Cal­cut­ta based news­pa­per The States­man pub­lished a report titled “Nazi pro­pa­gan­da in India” in which it referred to the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture and claimed that “among its list of office bear­ers are Indi­ans trained in Ger­many who have def­i­nite­ly pro-Nazi lean­ings” (NAI: EAD F.No. 288‑X).

It is pos­si­ble that Sarkar was wary of the colo­nial author­i­ties. A pro­gramme of the Soci­ety from April 1939 shows the date of its estab­lish­ment as 1932, prob­a­bly to prove that it exist­ed before the Nazis came to pow­er (BArch Berlin: R57/10712).

The Fed­er­al Archives in Berlin have an undat­ed list of “Course of stud­ies and inves­ti­ga­tions” to be pur­sued by dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Soci­ety (BArch Berlin: R57/10712). The top­ics includ­ed “Trav­els in Ger­many” by Biren Das Gup­ta, “Ger­man influ­ence on Indi­an thought” (Naren­dra Nath Law), “Ger­man achieve­ments in med­i­cine, surgery and hygiene” (Amulya Chan­dra Ukil), “Eco­nom­ic, Social and Con­sti­tu­tion­al devel­op­ments of the Ger­man Peo­ple” (Benoy Kumar Sarkar), “The Progress of Indol­o­gy in Ger­many” (Nali­naksha Dutt), “Women’s activ­i­ties in Ger­many” (Sushama Sen­gup­ta), and Ger­man jour­nal­ism (Pra­ful­la Kumar Chakrabar­ty) among oth­ers. This list demon­strates that mem­bers with­out any ties with Ger­many could also be induced to advo­cate “Ger­man achieve­ments”, under­scor­ing once more the appeal that Ger­many enjoyed among a sec­tion of the intel­lec­tu­al elite in Calcutta.

The Polit­i­cal Archive of the Ger­man For­eign Min­istry has a book­let with a pho­to­graph and details of a pro­gramme orga­nized by the Soci­ety. The pho­to, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 10, 1938, is titled “Bangiya Jar­man Vidya Sam­sad at home” (PA AA: R10477). It depicts a meal in progress at an appar­ent­ly expen­sive restau­rant. The cap­tion men­tions the names of the assem­bled com­pa­ny, which include, apart from Benoy Kumar Sarkar, oth­er Ben­galis with Ger­man con­nec­tions like Biren Roy and Satin Das Gup­ta. The lat­ter, an hon­orary sec­re­tary of the Soci­ety, was the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Indo-Swiss Trad­ing Co. Mem­bers of the Ger­man con­sulate in Cal­cut­ta includ­ing the Con­sul Count Erd­mann Graf von Podewil­lis-Dürniz and the com­mer­cial agent Carl Rass­muss were also present.

Notable among the oth­er guests were the philoso­pher C. G. Jung and the eth­nol­o­gist Egon Frei­herr von Eick­st­edt. The latter’s views on race enjoyed con­sid­er­able influ­ence among the Nazi rul­ing elite (Preuß 2017: 186–191). The pho­to­graph was most prob­a­bly tak­en at a func­tion orga­nized by the Soci­ety to hon­our Eick­st­edt as well as oth­er Ger­man del­e­gates to the Indi­an Sci­ence Con­gress which was held in Cal­cut­ta in Jan­u­ary 1938. The book­let con­tains a sum­ma­ry of the pro­ceed­ings of this for­mal occa­sion which most­ly con­sist­ed of speech­es cel­e­brat­ing Ger­man sci­ence as well as Germany’s suc­cess in over­com­ing past obstacles.

It is not sur­pris­ing that in a let­ter to the For­eign Min­istry in Berlin in August 1938, the Ger­man Con­sulate in Cal­cut­ta named the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture as the most impor­tant orga­ni­za­tion in India encour­ag­ing Ger­man-Indi­an cul­tur­al rela­tion­ship. It praised the Society’s efforts to unite Indi­ans who had stud­ied in Ger­many and to pro­mote and fos­ter the study of Ger­man insti­tu­tions, sci­ences, and arts (PA AA: RZ501/60667).

The last avail­able bul­letin of the Soci­ety is the resume of Benoy Kumar Sarkar’s lec­ture on “New ten­den­cies in Ger­man Social Phi­los­o­phy”, deliv­ered on 20^th March 1939 (BArch R57/10712).

Conclusion

This arti­cle has pro­vid­ed a brief sketch of the back­ground and activ­i­ties of the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture. It is evi­dent from this short dis­cus­sion that the Soci­ety ful­filled Sarkar´s per­son­al mis­sion of invent­ing a past and imag­in­ing a future for India, com­bin­ing ele­ments of what he held to be the “Hin­du spir­it” and the Ger­man “advance­ments”, par­tic­u­lar­ly under Hitler’s lead­er­ship. Though some of the lec­tures doubtless­ly served to sat­is­fy the curios­i­ty of the edu­cat­ed Ben­galis about Ger­man sci­en­tif­ic and cul­tur­al devel­op­ments, the Soci­ety was pri­mar­i­ly meant to func­tion as a mouth­piece for uncrit­i­cal prop­a­ga­tion of Ger­many, par­tic­u­lar­ly of Nazi poli­cies and world­views, which were offered as par­a­digms to an audi­ence look­ing for nation­al self-asser­tion. In this regard, the Ben­gali Soci­ety of Ger­man Cul­ture was an instru­ment of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da in the 1930s.

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