Chitra Subramaniam| The News Minute| August 18, 2014| 4.00 pm ISTAre we as a people fascinated with violence, especially that done to others? Are we as a people attracted to fascism? Even in our stupidity, arrogance and ignorance, we are racists. How else to exclaim that Hitler and Mussolini roll out of our tongues when we are angry and not Pol Pot? Why do we name our children Stalin and not Kim Jong-Un or Ravan? Remember, Hitler built roadsOver the last weekend, K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), chief minister of Telangana said he didn't mind being compared to Adolf Hitler if that meant he delivered justice. Further south, a DMK politician is called Stalin. Throughout the last Lok Sabha campaign, commentators used the term “final solution†without batting an eye-lid. Shoa, concentration camps, Nazi, Hitler was the stuff of national debates on prime time networks. Mussolini, however, was not bandied about and not much emphasis was placed on the fascists in Italy from whom Hitler drew inspiration. But that is another story.Read- Want to be Hitler to stop injustice, not ashamed: K Chandrasekhar RaoNot one person – not one – who used these terms was either banned from appearing as an expert commentator on television or writing in newspapers. Rather, they were encouraged and applauded for drawing parallels about what will happen to India if a certain Narendra Modi became the country’s Prime Minister. Now KCR says he doesn’t mind being Hitler to fight injustices- the context is a household survey of all people living in Telangana. In any civilized democracy, the media would have denied such hate-speech and hate-mongers a second chance. So what did Hitler actually do is a question that numerous educated Indians ask among and around themselves. When KCR revelled in the comparison to the man who industrially exterminated 6 million people, he had supporters who said he was misquoted or the context was stretched. It isn't just him, many of us have an unholy fascination with the name 'Hitler', movies and stores are named after him.Dachau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau are some names of concentration camps where Jews and gypsies were sent to certain death. They were gassed, axed, burnt, baked, beheaded and medically tested on. Mothers were asked to accompany their children to their joint deaths. Artists, writers, singers were asked to play, sing and dance for German soldiers who then shot them at will. If you can’t take the stench of death from the camps, then see Sophie’s Choice, Schindler’s List, Shoa or read Anne Frank’s diaries. There you will see and read how mobile gas vans were used first to exterminate Jewish people while more permanent structures were built with specially manufactured ovens to kill human beings. The bloodiest wars in the last century were fought in Europe. World War II (1939-1945) was meant to be the final solution that would rid world of Jews. Families fleeing Poland and Bulgaria, Germany and Russia changed their names, the wealthy left their money in Swiss banks without names – the destruction was total. We at The News Minute (TNM) suggest that all Indian politicians, experts and others who speak of concentration camps and Hitler visit one as part of their study trips abroad.