1/26/2005: Hindu swastika
 

http://cellar.org/2004/hinduswastika.jpg

According to Hindu mythology, Swastika is the sign of prosperity. It wasn't their fault that it came to represent Nazism and thus a kind of evil. And so Hindus have launched a campaign to reclaim the swastika from its Nazi past and reinstate the 5,000-year-old emblem as a symbol of good luck.

Marketing is important, even to religions and schools of thought. But in this case they have a pretty difficult way to go. I'm not sure I could be convinced that this is a symbol of luck and/or prosperity. I don't mind if the Hindus use it differently, but I don't expect them to change our culture's notion of what it is.

All of which is very strange, when you think about it; it's just a symbol, just a mark, just a set of lines. Or is it?

I remember seeing swastikas in the Southwest in rock paintings by the Navahos? or another native american tribe. I thought some damn punk kids had vandalized the place, but found out later I was wrong.

Who named it the "Swastika?" Is that the original name or is that what the Nazi's named it??

Apparently they hired some British royalty to help their marketing effort...

(Pronunciation Key)swas·ti·ka Listen: [ swst-k ]
n.
An ancient cosmic or religious symbol formed by a Greek cross with the ends of the arms bent at right angles in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction.
Such a symbol with a clockwise bend to the arms, used as the emblem of the Nazi party and of the German state under Adolf Hitler, officially adopted in 1935.
---------------------------------------------------------------
[Sanskrit svastika, sign of good luck, swastika, from svasti, well-being; see (e)su- in Indo-European roots.] :)

But did the Nazis first call that symbol a swastika, or were the Hindus already calling it that?

I don't think it's that strange, since just about everything in our culture is one symbol or another. Even the physical objects we surround ourselves do double duty as symbols (cars, clothes). And symbols have all the power we assign to them. The collective power of social investment in a symbol is what gives it its meaning.

This particular symbol is about as powerful as a symbol gets, not just because of what it stands for, but also for the sheer number of people on this planet that know the symbol. It truly transcends the boundary of any one culture. Which is why this effort by the Hindus is not just insensitive to the rest of the world, but doomed to failure. It's not their symbol anymore.

And then, of course, some may be familiar with the picture of the Edmonton Swastikas, a Canadian girls' hockey team from 1916...

<IMG SRC="http://www.trichotomy.ca/images/edmontonswastikas.jpg" />

Why is it insensitive for a group to try to reclaim their religious emblem of peace and prosperity from a group that turned it into a secular emblem of hate and persecution?

But the whole point is that they are trying to change the world's idea of what the symbol is. It may be hard, but it isn't impossible.

Reminds me of U2 saying on Rattle and Hum that they were stealing "Helter Skelter" back from Manson, who stole it from the Beatles.

When I was a kid in the 70's we would "xerox" things at the library if we needed them for a book report. Now I "photocopy" things at work. I never made a consious effort to switch the words I use to describe that action. It was a successful campaign by Xerox, adopted by much of society, that got me to think differently.

If Xerox can get me to change my language, maybe these guys can get me to think about that symbol differently.

There was a lot of resentment against the Finns during and after World War II when pictures were seen of swastikas painted on aircraft:

http://www.swastika-info.com/en/arti...061679609.html

(Any plane buffs out there? Is that a Brewster Buffalo? I know the US sent a few over to aid the Finns vs the Russians).

Supposedly, the Nazis didhelp the Finns when they were invaded by Russia, but the Finns were using swastikas long before the Nazis came to power.

(edited to add this quote)
Because it's no longer a symbol of peace and well-being. How do you think Jews feel about that picture? People are still very sensitive to that symbol, as witnessed lately with the whole Prince Harry debacle.

Look, I'm no political-correctness policeman, but I think it's important to keep that symbol as it is as a reminder of what happened. It'd be a shame if its meaning got diluted, and besides, how confusing would it be if some part of the world associated it with peace and well-being, and another part of the world associated it with the most famous genocide in human history? Talk about your mixed messages.

But you see, that's where you're wrong. It never stopped being a symbol of peace and well-being. It now has two meanings.

Quite honestly that is their problem, not the problem of the millions of hindus around the world who feel quite differently about it.

Please don't use the royals as an example for anything, it can only hurt your credibility. ;)

But by wanting to squash the feelings of a people who have been using that symbol for longer than a number of the countries in this world have existed, just because someone is offended by it, then you are exactly that.

It's not diluting something to return it to the 5000 +/- meaning it has carried. Quite the opposite I believe.

And as to mixed messages, it's not sending a mixed message. A hindu walking around with a swastika around his neck as a talisman is only doing it for himself.

I don't think this issue is about whether it can be done (which I doubt), so much as it is about whether it should be done. Your analogy to the symbol of 'xerox' falls a tad short, since few (if any) people have an emotional attachment to the word you use for copying papers.

I have sympathy for those Hindus who feel like they've lost an important cultural symbol, and I understand why they want it back. But it's not theirs anymore. To try and change the meaning of that symbol does a disservice to all those that died in the shadow of the swastika. I'm not Jewish, but I can't imagine too many Jews who would be willing to embrace the swastika as a symbol of peace. The only positive I see in this is that the world is reminded that the symbol had a history before Nazism, but I don't think it's got a future beyond that, nor should it, imo.

Have you at least asked a jew?