Interesting AP story regarding a Bollywood film about Hitler titled Dear Friend Hitler. From the piece:

[In India], Hitler is not viewed as the personification of evil, but with an attitude of morally ambiguous fascination. He is seen as a management guru – akin to Machiavelli or Sun Tzu – by business students, and an object of wonder by people craving order amid the chaos of India.

A sociologist, Ashsish Nandy, gives several reasons for this:

For some readers, modern India is a country in chaos and, there is a “certain admiration” for Hitler and his extreme authoritarianism.

There is also India’s colonial inheritance when “every enemy of Britain was a friend of India and at least potentially a good person,” he says, adding that among today’s young readers “there is kind a vague sense that it’s about a person who gave a tough time to the Brits.”

Much of this is likely to look strange to Westerners where Hitler is often invoked as the “epitome of evil.” But the two reasons given by Nandy may have some merit. The British colonial legacy, often negative even more than six decades later, is still a strong cultural factor. Current “chaos” also invokes hope that any leader, in any form, might bring order.