Last week, we wrote an article about the shocking NYS2727 bill – a bill that owes its origins to religio-racist supremacist attitudes. It labels a 6,000-year old globally adopted symbol of Peace, the Svastik, as a hate symbol for the acts of a totally evil man & his gang for a 25-year old period in Germany 100-75 years ago.
And the groups that are pushing this hateful bill are doing this knowingly. They know what the Svastik is and has been for the known human history. They probably know what they are doing is supremacist both on racial & religious grounds. But they don’t care because they know they have the power & enough ego to drive this bill through in the State of New York.
In our opinion, this false & evil labeling of the Svastik smacks of several occasions when some societies labeled religious Jewish Symbols as evil & harmful. The most extreme of these was Hitler’s Nazi Germany that began its hate crimes with such labeling. More recently, the Middle Eastern Arab States labeled Jewish symbols as evil and banned them. Both Nazi Germans & the Arabs knew that their labeling of Jewish symbols was wrong & evil. But they didn’t care because they had the power & the internal hate to do so. And they forced teachers & school to indoctrinate young children in this hate-filled lie.
And now a group of Jews are doing exactly the same to “Hindus/Buddhists/Jains” in the State of New York, labeling the Sacred Svastik as a symbol of hate. They are forcing the NY Senate to pass this bill that will compel NY educators to spread their evil lies & defamations to young children. They know and the NY Senate knows that this labeling is wrong & evil. But they don’t care because this group of Jews have the power & ego and the NY Senate is both gutless & powerless to oppose them.
Societies have schisms & fault lines. Smart societies enable discussion & resolution among the differing groups. But a very dark, sinister & evil line gets crossed when a Government, or a branch of the Government, incorporates such evil via legal & legally-passed bills. That is what Nazi Germany & Middle Eastern Arabs did. And now the NY Senate is doing precisely that under the power & money of a a group of Jews.
This hatred of Hindus in & from a group of Jews came all of a sudden or so it seems. So what has drives it now? It may well be that Hindus/Buddhists/Jains are mere pawns in this, a bigger battle, an internecine battle.
1.What is a Symbol?
The word, from what we know, is derived from the Greek “symbolon” which is supposed to mean “a sign by which one infers“, or a “token”. Some are local & some are global. Usually, the symbols that appeal to the inherent good in humans spread globally while those which appeal to the darker side remain local.
That brings us to the Svastik. No symbol in world history has spread so globally and been adopted so welcomingly as the Svastik. It literally spread to every corner of the world as was described painstakingly by Thomas Wilson, Curator, Department of Prehistoric Anthropology in his 1894 book “THE SWASTIKA – The earliest known symbol, and its migrations …“. Those who want a 2-minute pictorial evidence should look at Sections 3-7 of our last week’s article.
There is no doubt that the Svastik originated in the Indus Valley & that the name is a Sanskrut name. The main word is Svasti which is a state all good people aspire to. How has Svasti been defined?
सर्वेऽपि सुखिन: सन्तु; – Let all be happily content
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः – Let all be without ill-health
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु; – Let all perceive the Noble
मा कश्चित् दुक्खम् आप्नुयात् – Let no one suffer grief
That is why the most traditional departure greeting has been “Svasti Astu Te” meaning “May Svasti Be Yours“. The “k” suffix denotes creator of. Hence the name Svastik means the Creator of Svasti. Now you understand why this symbol went global thousands of years ago & remains so.
Now to the Star of David. Wikipedia tells us that,
- The earliest Jewish usage of the symbol was inherited from medieval Arabic literature by Kabbalists for use in talismanic protective amulets (segulot) where it was known as the Seal of Solomon among Muslims.[4][5] The name “shield of David” (and later “Star of David”) may have originated in either Islamic or Jewish mystical works.[6] Before the 19th century, official use in Jewish communities was generally known only in the region of today’s Czech Republic, Austria and possibly parts of Southern Germany, having begun in medieval Prague, as one of many heraldic symbols.[6][7]
And,
- During the 19th century the symbol began to proliferate among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately being used among the Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement. A significant motivating factor, according to scholar Gershom Scholem, was the desire to represent Jewish religion or identity in the same manner the Christian cross identified that religion’s believers.[8] The symbol became representative of the worldwide Zionist community after it was chosen as the central symbol on a flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, due to its usage in some Jewish communities and its lack of specifically religious connotations.[9][10]
The Kabbalah or Kabbalist reference intrigues us. Because Wikipedia also says that the Jewish Kabbalistic work “Parashat Eliezer” shows the Svastik posed of Hebrew letters as a mystical symbol.
Wikipedia also says ,
- Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God–the mysterious Ein Sof (אֵין סוֹף, “The Infinite”)–[5][6] and the mortal, finite universe (God’s creation).[3][5] It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.[3][7]
This is fascinating to us because that is also the difference between the Rutam (Eternal, Unchanging Cosmic Truth) and the Satyam (Material Earthly Truth) concepts that go back to Rg-Ved, the earliest text extant.
All this notwithstanding, many argue that today’s meaning of a symbol is more important & that is how a symbol is to be judged. And that is given as the reason for labeling the Svastik as a hate symbol.
But if a symbol is to be judged based on how one group may view hate in that symbol, then why isn’t the Star of David also a symbol of hate? Look at the images you readily get on the internet? They show how the Jewish Star of David is viewed all across the World by non-Jewish communities, especially Arabs & Muslims.
And speaking of the great State of New York, look at what one exam reportedly conducted by the NY State contained:
So by the same definition, as used by the group of Jews forcing this NYS2727 Bill, shouldn’t the Star of David be also labeled as a symbol of hate?
But the NY Senate does not agree. They know how the Star of David is perceived in the Muslim communities in the State of New York and in many regions in the World including Europe. But they don’t care. To them only the Svastik is to be labeled as a symbol of hate.
That brings us to the difference between the views of a balanced Jewish man & the views of a NY Senator, a politician who sits on the Education Committee of the NY Senate.
3. A balanced Jewish viewpoint
Last week we quoted what the New York Post had written about the views expressed by Mr. Steven Heller, co-chairman of the School of Visual Arts and MF Design. After a conversation with Mr. Heller, we had discussed those quotes in our article last week. We sent our last week’s article to Mr. Heller & asked for a response.
Mr. Heller was open enough to send us his response & he has kindly permitted us to quote the paragraphs below from his email. We sincerely thank him for that:
- “I read the excerpts of the proposed bill and disagree with a blanket condemnation. I believe the Nazi symbol (which is generally referred to in the US and Europe in popular culture, documentaries, and scholarly texts as a Swastika) should be acknowledged as a hate symbol and still has untold power. It has long been used and continues to be used as logos and emblems by neo-Nazis, racists and white supremacists groups in various iterations of the basic form. But I am totally opposed to a Senate bill (or any legislation) that implicitly or explicitly condemns all Swastikas, Hooked Crosses or Runic letters and ideographs as criminal. The history is too complicated.”
He adds,
- “There are already ordinances and laws that address both hate crimes and vandalism, and the use of the Nazi symbol should be adjudicated based on those laws. Even given the increasing cases of outward racism (Trumpism) and other zenophobic manifestations, I would not support legislation that banned free speech, the consequences of which would be harmful (I believe banning encourages the racists who use the symbol to continue).”
But that doesn’t mean Mr. Heller is opposed to discussion of hate symbols in educational curriculum:
- “I do, however, support any curriculum that mandates education of signs, symbols, marks, ideographs, and other visual symbology. Visual literacy is as important as any other literacy starting at a young age. I find your article of great interest and will hand it out to my students.”
The final statement of Mr. Heller is absolutely on point:
- “Conversation and rhetoric, must be measured through a balance of intellect and emotion.”
And, as we all know, all balance is lost when a Government Body decides to sit in narrow race-religion based judgement based on the narrow & bigoted views of one constituency.
Now let us remind all what Mr. Heller had discussed in our conversation and what we had written last week:
- But should the Star of David be labelled as a symbol of hate because of what Israel is doing in the West Bank or the Gaza? Mr. Steven Heller, the man who was quoted in the New York Post article, was not eager to say yes but he did relent. He also thinks the Christian Crucifix & the American Flag could be cited as Symbols of Hate. He is of strongly liberal beliefs that argue all religious symbols used while causing pain & grief should be labelled as symbols of hate. He pointed out to us that Christian Crusaders had painted the Crucifix on their uniforms while killing Muslims during the Crusades. So it would be appropriate to label the Christian Crucifix as a symbol of hate.
His views might be criticized by many. But if you judge any symbol based on how one constituency sees it, then you must so judge other symbols based on how other constituencies see those. The only reason you won’t is because you view certain communities as more “in” or “endowed with greater rights” than others.
That is what the NY S2727 bill does and it amounts to a NYSenate’s repudiation of the Bill of Rights that created the United States of America.
4. A Race-Religion Supremacist view
A Hindu constituent sent us the email below from one of the Senators involved in this NY S2727 bill:
- Thank you for contacting my office concerning the Senate Bill S2727 regarding the teaching of the history of the Swastika symbol’s use by the Nazi party in Germany. First and foremost, I want you to know that I believe in freedom of religion and condemn all religious intolerance in any form. I would also like to clarify that I am not currently a sponsor of this bill.
- While I can understand and appreciate that the Swastika has been used by Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains for millenia prior to being co-opted by the Nazi Party for its evil aims, I am also deeply disturbed that there are many New Yorkers who have not been accurately taught about the horrors of the Holocaust where the Nazis murdered more than 6 million Jews, along with at least 1 million others. The Nazi government also launched an aggressive war that killed tens of millions of civilians of many races, creeds, and nationalities. This has led to the need for our schools to teach the context of the Swastika as used by the Nazi Party in Germany as a symbol of hate, and its continued use today by white supremacists here in New York to spread hatred and terrorize our fellow New Yorkers.
- I fully support the rights and freedoms of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and any other religion to use the symbol in its original context, and would agree that children should be aware that the swastika has great significance in the religious traditions of some of the oldest faiths in the world.
- I will keep your concerns in mind and will consider the points you have raised if the bill comes up for a vote in the Senate. Please contact my office if you have any further concerns.
The Senator & the entire Bill are concerned about the “need for our schools to teach” about “symbol of hate“. It is a noble purpose indeed if nobly used. When you speak about “schools”, we assume the Senator is talking about “school children”.
So let us ask about who the school children are. New York State has about 1,7 million Jews according to a Google search. The number of Muslims & Asians living in New York State exceeds that number. In fact, Asians in New York State number 1.8 million per Google search. The Muslims are a multi-racial community and the Asians are a multi-religious community. The majority Christian community is also multi-racial.
In contrast and as far as we know, the Jewish New Yorkers are mainly are one-race & one-religion community. And the NY S2727 bill is ONLY about & addresses ONLY what this single One-Race & One-Religion community cares about. What about sending a false & wrong message to all the non-Jewish children studying in New York Schools? What about the symbols of hate under which their ancestors & families have suffered? Guess this Senator & this Bill doesn’t care about them.
This alone makes this Bill itself a symbol of Racial & Religious Supremacy that this Senator & the NY Senate believe in & now practice. That is why the end result of the Bill will be to actually spread racial & religious hate to students under the disguise of teaching students about hate. Guess they have forgotten how Hitler did exactly the same thing while establishing Nazi control. Under the disguise of protecting Germans & their children, he taught them to hate the Symbols of Judaism. Hitler knew when you teach children to hate a symbol, you actually teach children to hate the people whose symbol it is.
And the NY S2727 Bill is designed to do just that & will end up doing precisely that. It will teach NY children to hate the Svastik, a symbol of peace, and in doing so teach them to hate the Asians who cherish the Svastik. Goebbels would be proud of this NY Senator and of the entire NY Senate. And so would Osama Bin Laden if he were still alive.
Now read the Senator sentence “New Yorkers who have not been accurately taught about the horrors of the Holocaust where the Nazis murdered more than 6 million Jews”. Ask who murdered those 6 million Jews? The Nazis. What was the religion of those Nazis? See that doesn’t matter. Their religion did not make them commit murder of 6 million Jews. The symbol called Swastika did. Yes, the Hindu/Buddhist/Jain Swastika symbol led the Nazis to murder 6 million Jews not the German culture or the German Christianity practiced in Germany.
This is a trick used by every hate-filled terror-teacher in history. And the master of this trick was Adolf Hitler & his propaganda chief Goebbels. They taught the Germans, especially the children, that Germany’s problems were because of these outsiders, the Jews. And now this Senator and the NY S2727 bill are going to teach NY schoolchildren that murder of European Jews was really due to this Asian symbol called the Swastika and not due to German Christian people.
Now look at the use of the Senator’s term “terrorize our fellow New Yorkers“. This NY Senator is talking about a bill that will literally spread fear among Asian families in New York and “terrorize” Hindu/Buddhist/Jain children while he professes the need to condemn who “spread hate & terrorize our fellow New Yorkers”. Isn’t it clear that to this Senator, Asians are NOT his “fellow New Yorkers”? That they don’t have the right race or religion to be considered as “fellow New Yorkers” by this Senator.
While he engages in this kind of hate, he writes – “I believe in freedom of religion and condemn all religious intolerance in any form”.
Now look at the really heinous line of his – “I fully support the rights and freedoms of Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and any other religion to use the symbol in its original context“. So now he & his NY Senate are going to sit in judgement about what is the “original context” of a Symbol of Hindus, Buddhists & Jains? So anything they deem as “non-original context” is wrong & criminal?
The original context of the Svastik has NOT changed even an iota. But the Senator does not care. He is reserving for himself & his band of Senators the right to declare the Swastika as a hate symbol when used “not in its “original context”” according to them. So under this, Asian school children will be labeled as hateful by any teacher who deems they are using a hate symbol. And having been labeled so, they can be suspended or thrown out of NY Schools?
And on top this, this Senator claims he “condemns all religious intolerance in any form“? You know, this Senator & his merry band of Senators should go on a speaking tour of the world teaching every dictator how to spread religious hate under the guise of supporting religious rights! Perhaps this Senator should run for the President of Pakistan. That state reserves for itself the right to judge whether a Pakistani is a true Muslim or not and the right to imprison or kill him, if they judge him to not be a True Muslim.
But one place this NY Senator & his NY Senate band should avoid – Israel, the Jewish country that seems to love Hindus. They know that many of the Jews that got banished from the Middle East went to South India some 800 years ago. They were welcomed & treated with respect by Hindus. In fact, India may be the one country & Hindus might be the one people who have never attacked Jews either physically or intellectually.
Yet, the New York Senate chooses to label sacred Hindu symbol of Heavenly Peace as a symbol of hate. Guess this is a big difference between this group of American Jews & Israeli Jews.
The above was emotion, true & honest emotion. Now back to intellect, to use the phrase of Steven Heller.
5. When elephants fight, rabbits get trampled
Sometime ago, Dr. Friedman of Geopolitical Futures had written about the differences between Israeli Jews & American Jews. Dr. Friedman is among the many who lost family members during the Jewish Holocaust under Hitler. So he writes with both intellect & emotion.
His basic point was that American Jews have lost much of the fear that permeated Jewish communities for centuries. They are secure, rich & politically powerful. In contrast, Israeli Jews are still insecure, physically insecure about living in a small country surrounded by past & potentially future enemies. Because as one told us, when Jews lose a war, they don’t just lose a war; they lose everything.
In this context, we recall an article in Foreign Policy magazine in May 2020 that asked How to End the Special Relationship With Israel. Under that provocative quote, the author wrote:
- “By any measure, Israel is an advanced country with an economy that is well integrated with the rest of the world, especially in the information technology sector. Its per capita GDP is roughly on par with the United Kingdom’s and France’s. On security, Israel has a more capable and sophisticated military than all of its neighbors, and its strategic position has never been better. … U.S. officials must communicate that it is time for the relationship to change. Israel’s security is ensured, and the country has prospered, which was always Washington’s goal. And although Israel and the United States have both benefited from the more than $142 billion Washington has invested in it, it is hard to make the case for a continuation of this generous assistance … “
Mr. Cook wrote about ending America’s special relationship with Israel in May 2020. Look what happened in the next 6-7 months.
United Arab Emirates, the smartest Arab country, signed a historic peace accord with Israel and Saudi Arabia gave its blessing to the accord. Now the entire set of Gulf Countries are at physical & economic peace with Israel. PM Modi has been involved in this behind the scenes & now India-Saudi-GCC-Israel is a Hindu-Muslim-Jewish grouping or even alliance for peace & economic prosperity.
That brings us to Prime Minister Netanyahu. We have never heard such hate against an Israeli leader from some American Jews as we hear about Netanyahu. We have spoken with a couple who actually hate Mr. Netanyahu more than they hate the Iranian regime that is committed to wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
So does this anti-Netanyahu hate have any bearing on the hate bill before the NY Senate? May be, but in a minor way. The real reason in our opinion, is the T-word.
That is where Steven Heller & the NY Senator agree. Mr. Heller used the words “increasing cases of outward racism (Trumpism) and other zenophobic manifestations” and the usage of the Hitler symbol as “logos and emblems by neo-Nazis, racists and white supremacists groups in various iterations of the basic form”. The NY Senator used the words “its continued use today by white supremacists here in New York to spread hatred and terrorize our fellow New Yorkers”.
We have heard this since the Charlottesville event in which a segment of the crowd carried the Hitler symbol signs in anti-Jewish hate. That was frightening to Jews as it was to Asians. American Jews have seen how many European Jews left Europe in the last decade because of Muslim riots in Europe. So they must be living in fear & united in their determination to not let that happen in America. Their greatest risk, they feel, comes from the extreme White Christian Right, the faction many Jews associate with Mr. Trump.
That is what this NY S2727 bill and others like it are about, in our opinion. The Jewish groups can’t name these groups in a Bill, they can’t even use the term “Christian” in their protests. So they chose the one symbol they could condemn without any fear of retribution. That is why this NY S2727 bill is termed as the Swastika Bill.
It is an old saying that when elephants fight, the rabbits get trampled or run away. In this fight between the Left wing Jewish groups & the Right wing groups, Hindus/Buddhists/Jains are the rabbits. They, they religion and their ancient & living symbol of Heavenly Peace, are all getting trampled. They are being tarred as spreaders of hate, their children are going to be abused & tormented in schools because of the NY S2727 bill.
Understand that the need to weaponize the Svastik into an anti-Right weapon is the big reason why these Jewish groups have now labeled the Sacred Svastik as virtually a T-symbol or a Trumpism symbol. That enables them to spread vitriol against the Svastik symbolizing the extreme right. That is why the NY Senator differentiated their use of T-Swastika from the “original context” of the Svastik.
This is why Hindus are getting trampled and they don’t even get it. They keep talking among themselves about the need to re-educate NY Senators. They don’t get that NY Senators understand what the real Svastik is & how that has nothing to do with Hitler. And that the NY Senators don’t care.
The NY Senators have converted the Swastika into a weapon against the White Right just as Hitler converted it into a weapon against Jews. Just as Hitler didn’t care about the reality of the Svastik, today’s Jewish persuaded NY Senate doesn’t care about the reality of the Svastik.
Sadly, the Hindu activists who are fighting this horrible hate-filled NY S2727 bill don’t get the reality. And even if they do, they have neither the organization nor the money to fight this battle. It is as if the American Hindus/Buddhists/Jains have become the new “Jews” in this Nazi-like New York State.
6. Long Term Damage to US-India Relations
No one in India seems aware of this hate filled bill about the Svastik, a symbol that is virtually in every Indian home. No Indian can comprehend that any one can label the Svastik as a hate symbol and use that to abuse Hindu/Buddhist/Jain school children. A large mass of people like Indians don’t get angry quickly. Their anger is of the slow intensifying kind, one that gets eventually converted into certainty.
When they get there, their positive opinion & respect about America will change. China changed its image among Indians last summer by their deceptive attack in Ladakh. Now China will not be trusted for a very long time. Indians have known that America is not their friend; that America has always supported Pakistan against India. That has been changing for the last couple of years into a degree of confidence in America.
But when they see & hear that America has labeled their Svastik as a symbol of hate, that confidence will be gone. And that will affect everything America & India have done to build a strategic partnership. Look what happened this week:
- Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar – Feb 9 – Welcomed the comprehensive discussion today with @SecBlinken . Reviewed Indo-Pacific developments and the Quad cooperation. Exchanged views on the situation in Myanmar. Look forward to remaining in touch.
The QUAD architecture might be much easier to build than to repair the US-India partnership if the Indian people lose trust in America because of this insane Hate of Svastik Bill. So we urge Secretary Blinken & Minister Jaishankar to discuss this & stop this train towards a relationship disaster.
After all, the Indo-Pacific is a Svastik region, from India to Japan.
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