Living between two cultures

World War II was the beginning of an end. People saw horrors like no other and witnessed a time where war was not the only tragedy.

The Swastika of Destruction For all those people during the war and more important, the people who lived during the reign of Hitler and through the Holocaust, this symbol still stirs ghosts of the past. This one symbol has the power to open closed wounds and in a blink of an eye bring back monstrosities that cannot be forgotten. The swastika.

During Hitler's reign in Nazi Germany the swastika canopied Germany and all her colonies. It was a symbol of power and control. In his diary, the Mein Kampf Hitler wrote "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the swastika." Hitler stated that "As National Socialists, we see our program in our flag. In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic."


Because of its use by Hitler and the Nazis and, in modern times, by neo-Nazis and other hate groups, for many people in the West, the swastika is associated primarily with Nazism and white supremacy. Hence, outside historical contexts, it has become taboo in Western countries. However what would you say to people of Indian origin, when you remove the red background and white disc of the German flag and are left with only the swastika? The swastika, as most people may not know is also an extremely important Hindu religious symbol. It symbolizes well being and is used all over Hindu history. Even today the swastika is used during festivals. How then can one symbol spell horror for some people and virtue for others? The swastika therefore is a very controversial symbol. However, controversial as it may be, the real question is how effective is it, and to who?

The Swastika Redefined The swastika has held a place of great importance in India and Asia for thousands of years, and is widely used by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. The swastika is to be seen everywhere across the Indian sub-continent: sculptured into temples both ancient and modern, decorating buildings, houses, shops, painted onto public buses, in taxis - even decorating the dashboards of the three-wheeler motor rickshaws. Many religious and spiritual books display the symbol. It may well be the most prevalent symbol one will see in India. It has been seen as a symbol for good luck by people in both ancient and modern times. A closer look at the etymology of this Sanskrit word, however, reveals a deeper meaning. When the Sanskrit scholar and spiritual teacher, P.R. Sarkar visited Germany in 1979 he gave the following interpretation of the word: su - means "good", asti - means "to be, to exist", ik - means "what is in existence, and will continue to exist" and a - denotes feminine gender. So "Swastika" means a 'good existence' that is not to be destroyed and that remains in a good condition. Sarkar went on to say that its deeper meaning is permanent victory. In the context of the cultural origins of the swastika, this means the victory of dharma - the fundamental spiritual nature of humanity.
The Nazi Swastika In Nazi Germany, the swastika with its arms turned clockwise became the national symbol. In 1910, a poet and nationalist Guido von List suggested that the swastika as a symbol for all anti-Semitic organizations. When the National Socialist Party was formed in 1919, it adopted the ancient symbol, the swastika, giving it the worst meaning possible, destroying the good symbolism which the swastika had held for thousands of years prior. Today, whenever the ancient symbol is used, it is automatically assumed by most people that it is a Nazi symbol and that the people who use it are Nazis. When the Nazis took the ancient symbol, they erased the good meaning of the swastika, the symbol of purity and of life. The racist people of today further degrade the meaning of the ancient symbol by spray painting the swastika on people houses, cars, and even schools.

In February 2005, the European Union dropped plans to ban the use of the swastika in its 25 member states. The proposal from German Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats in the European Parliament had been for the banning of all Nazi symbols, however, it proved impossible for member states to agree on which symbols should be banned and the proposal was dropped. The controversy arose when Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, wore a Nazi costume and a swastika armband to a fancy dress party. The resulting proposal to introduce an E.U. wide ban on the swastika led to much discussion amongst different groups and organizations that use the symbol in their culture or religion. Most people are ignorant to the fact that the swastika was not only a Nazi symbol, symbolizing death and destruction. This is a prime example of how the world delineates the swastika as a bad symbol, and how the Nazis destroyed the meaning of the symbol by adopting it as their own.

The swastika symbolizes so much more than what the Nazis planned. The swastika existed as a symbol of good fortune thousands of years before the Nazis even existed. The symbol is to many cultures an important one, representing their history and beliefs. The Nazis, by taking the swastika, annihilated the significance of the ancient symbol. Today, the swastika is to most people a symbol of evil, a symbol of demise, and a symbol of ruination. It is extremely depressing to find that although the swastika is a symbol of life, and symbol of joy, it has been made a symbol of harm, something the people of the ancient world never intended it to be. Regardless of whether the swastika represented all those things, I personally feel that the swastika is offensive. Although I am Indian and I have grown up with the symbol, I believe that the swastika was marketed at a time when people were segregated, classed as useful and useless, genocide swept nations and people were treated with a fate worse than death. Being a student of History, I read countless accounts of events that took place during the Nazi regime. How babies were smashed to death while mothers watched horror struck. How people were left to rot in their own feces, stacked like books one on top of the other. How people were promised freedom, if only they went through a door, only to be gassed to death. Countless accounts and pictures depict these terrible things that happened to people. In Hitler's own words, the nation intended "to promote the victory of the better and the stronger and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker." Hitler targeted not only Jews but homosexuals, gypsies, and the handicapped. Medical experiments were performed on people, which included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes, and various amputations and other brutal surgeries. An account of a woman in Auschwitz stated that two children were taken away, when they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.

If this was the plight of all those people who suffered during Nazi Germany then I do not think that the swastika is a symbol worthy of being paraded. The goal of the Third Reich was never in accordance with the universal spiritual victory that the swastika represents.

So in conclusion, it was never about what the swastika was initially about but what it came to be and what it stands for today. We as people owe it to all those who suffered at the hands of the Nazi's and to respect their death. The last thing we should be doing is flaunting a representation of inhumanity.