India Within Karl Haushofer’s Writing and Thinking

Presenter:

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Abstract

Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) is well-known, some would say “notorious,” as the “father of German geopolitics.” As such he has influenced the early Hitler as well as the Fuehrer’s foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, with regard to geopolitical thinking in general and the potential role of Japan as an ally. It is little known, though, that Haushofer extensively traveled in Ceylon and India on his way to his post as military observer to Japan. Ten weeks in Ceylon and the British Raj convinced Haushofer that all countries affected by the Monsoon (from India to Japan) constituted a geopolitical unit. Following World War I, he called for German cooperation with these countries against the colonial powers. After Haushofer established the Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (Journal for Geopolitics) in 1924, he published monthly reports about the Indo-Pacific Space until 1941, i.e., he not only remained interested in India but continued to see events in South Asia and the Indian Ocean as somehow connected to developments in China, Japan, the Southeast Asian colonies as well as in the Pacific. At Munich University, Haushofer supervised Ph.D. candidates working on India, and at the German Academy, he introduced and sometimes chaired the Indische Ausschuss (India Committee), which provided various Indian academics with scholarships to study in Berlin, Munich, and various other universities. He thus helped to intensify direct academic connections between Germany and India. With this kind of activities as a background, he corresponded with various Indian scholars such as Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (1880–1937), Benoy K. Sarkar (1887–1949) and Taraknath Das (1884–1958).