12.10.2023

Mourning for Indian Germanist Professor Anil Bhatti

Prof Dr Anil Bhatti passed away in Delhi on 11 October 2023. We lose in Anil Bhatti not only a revered colleague, but a friend. But above all he was a role model for us in terms of scholarly integrity, political courage, magnanimity, and humanity. 

Anil Bhatti was Professor Emeritus at the Centre of German Studies of the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Bhatti was without doubt one of the most important Germanists in India. He has influenced generations of students and later colleagues. He was president of the Indian Goethe Society from 1998 to 2012 and honorary president since 2012. In 1971, he had completed his doctorate on Clemens Brentano at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and since then had moved through Europe, the USA, Africa, and Southeast Asia. He particularly enjoyed spending long periods of time in Vienna: From 1996 to 2001 he was president of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Austrian and International Literary Processes in Vienna (INST). 

Bhatti has received many prestigious awards for his work on Goethe, Romanticism, Viennese Modernism, and culture theory. In 2005, he received the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 2011 the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class. In 2021, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. He was connected with the University of Tübingen in many ways, not only with the German Department, but also with the English Department and the Department of Media Studies. In 2011, at the instigation of the German Seminar, he was awarded the highest honor for international scholars, the Humboldt Research Award, by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Anil Bhatti introduced a new paradigm into the debate on globalism, interculturality, and universalism with the concept of cultural similarity, which he juxtaposed with, and indeed opposed, notions of cultural difference and identity: Similarity. A Paradigm for Culture Theory was published in 2018 and became an internationally acclaimed publication.

To honor his memory means to give understanding between cultures, religions, states, and people a chance – always and under all circumstances, even in difficult times.

Dorothee Kimmich