What do you think when you hear or read the word Swastik? You immediately think about Nazi Germany. Why? Because you have been told that the Swastik is a Nazi Symbol. You are not alone. The world has been told that so often and so repeatedly that it borders on brainwashing.
We read this terminology in the past couple of weeks in the New York Times, Associated Press and BBC.com. We read it in the comments of Orna Sagiv, Israel’s Consul General in Mumbai, who described Indians as “ignorant”. Perhaps Ms. Sagiv meant well. But we did wonder whether Ms. Sagiv wasn’t ignorant herself; possibly worse than ignorant. And that applies double to the New York Times.
1. The concept of “Svasti”
Svasti is the word for peace and well-being. Not just ordinary peace or material well-being. Svasti stands for the highest level of blissful peace that us humans can envisage. The ancient Samskrut invocation provides a description of Svasti:
- Let all humanity be happily content. Let all humanity be without ill-health. Let all humanity perceive the Noble. Let no one suffer grief or pain.
Every Samskrut invocation prays for grant of Svasti to us. The Samskrut equivalent of “see you later” was, has been and is “Let Svasti Be Yours“ (Svasti Astu Te).
The word Svasti is a combination of the prefix “S” or “Su” which stands for “good/noble” in a supra-material sense and “asti” which stands for a state. The word Svasti is the composite of “su” & “asti”.
Svasti is a state and not a icon or a symbol of its creation. The suffix “k” or “ka” (a silent) stands for the ‘symbol of’ or a ‘creator of’. That is how you get the word Svastik or Svastika, the symbol of or the creator of Svasti. It is both a pictorial invocation of Svasti as well as an agent for the grant of Svasti.
This is why Indians have drawn or painted the Svastik since the beginning of known time. That is why to this day, virtually every single Indian household, whether in India or in the Global Indian Diaspora, is adorned with the Svastik during every festival.
* The British created term Swastika is incorrect both phonetically and
etymologically. The above etymology demonstrates that there is no “w” sound in the composite of Su & Asti. The correct spelling is Svastik.
2. The unique Universalism of Svasti & Svastik
The concept of Svasti and its symbol Svastik is inherently universal. It transcends any and every religion, faith, school and creed. All the other religious symbols and icons we know are linked to a single religion or a single religious figure. For example, the Christian Cross is linked to one man, Jesus Christ. By its very name, the Star of David is linked to Jewish David.
It should be easy for Christians and Jews to believe in Svasti, to respect the Svastik symbol. In fact, they used to.
A quick look at Wikipedia (which uses the British spelling Swastika) shows you that Svastik symbol had gained worldwide acceptance for centuries. Look at the pictures below from the Wikipedia article. The Greek, Roman, Japanese versions do not surprise us because we know of the deep relationship that existed between India and ancient Greece, ancient Rome.
(Indian Svastik symbol) (a modern version with Anglicized name) (Seals – Indus Valley civilization)
(ancient Roman Mosaics – Spain) (13-14 century Church in Nesebar) (Etruscan pendant Italy)
(Greek Silver coins – 6th century BC) (Buddhist Temple, Japan) (10th century Armenian Fort)
But we were surprised to read about the Jewish & Freemason connections in the Wikipedia article:
- “Freemasons also gave the swastika symbol importance. In medieval Northern European Runic Script, a counter-clockwise swastika denotes the letter ‘G,’ and could stand for the important Freemason terms God, Great Architect of the Universe, or Geometry.”
- “An unusual swastika, composed of the Hebrew letters Aleph and Resh, appears in the 18th century Kabbalistic work “Parashat Eliezer” by Rabbi Eliezer Fischl of Strizhov, a commentary on the obscure ancient eschatological book “Karnayim”, ascribed to Rabbi Aharon of Kardina. The symbol is enclosed by a circle and surrounded by a cyclic hymn in Aramaic. The hymn, which refers explicitly to the power of the Sun, as well as the shape of the symbol, shows strong solar symbolism. According to the book, this mandala-like symbol is meant to help a mystic to contemplate on the cyclic nature and structure of the Universe. The letters are the initial and final characters of the Hebrew word, אוֹר, or “light”.
3. The entry of Hitler
Not many people in India know this, but Hitler had utter contempt for Indians. Hitler believed that the people who created Indian Culture were invaders of his cherished Nordic Race. Hitler argued that as these pure Nordic warriors entered deep into India, they married local Indians and so lost their ‘greatness’. Hitler viewed Indians as a mixed breed damned by their inherent meekness.
Not for him, the spiritually pure universalism of the Svastik. He wanted a purely German symbol, a symbol for his concept of his pure master race, a symbol that exuded power and supremacism. So Hitler’s regime changed the direction of the Svastik, changed the bright, peaceful colors to dark black and red and manufactured that resultant deranged, destructive atrocity, the symbol of his Third Reich.
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. So look at the Nazi atrocity below and compare it to the many pictures of the real Svastik above. Just a quick glance is enough to tell you that the True Svastik and the Nazi Symbol are diametrically opposite in color and message. In fact, they are mutually exclusive. Just as Good cannot coexist with Evil, the Svastik and the Nazi atrocity cannot coexist.
This is why the only proper term for the Nazi symbol is the Anti-Svastik. Any one who understands the concept of Anti-Christ should immediately relate to the term Anti-Svastik.
4. The Svastik and Anti-Svastik – Gandhi & Hitler.
We have, on numerous occasions, called Gandhi the Greatest Good man of the 20th century. Likewise, we have termed Hitler the Worst Evil man of the 20th century. These two are mutually exclusive. True to form, Hitler had advised Churchill to shoot Gandhi.
The Svastik originated from the land & culture that produced Gandhi. The Anti-Svastik was manufactured by the perverted thinking that produced Hitler.
So we hereby make an appeal to every News Organization in the World to stop calling the Nazi Symbol as Svastik or its British form Swastika. That would be like calling Hitler as the Nazi Gandhi.
We hereby make an appeal to every major Jewish Organization in the world and an appeal to the State of Israel to stop using the term Swastika for the Nazi Symbol.
Our preference is that you use the term Anti-Svastik to describe what the Nazi symbol says. If that is to m
uch of a leap for pre-conditioned minds, then just call it the Nazi symbol.
5. The Cross and Anti-Cross
We were also surprised to read:
- “In Christianity, the swastika is used as a hooked version of the Christian Cross, the symbol of Christ’s victory over death. Some Christian churches built in the Romanesque and Gothic are decorated with swastikas, carrying over earlier Roman designs.”
This should enable every Christian to call the Nazi Symbol as Anti-Svastik. Hitler symbolized death. So how can today’s Christians call the Nazi symbol of death as Svastik, the symbol of Christ’s victory over death?
This brings us to the concept of the Cross and Anti-Cross, a concept we had heard in our childhood.
Most people know of the Christian atrocities in Spain, the history of Torquemada, the Spanish Inquisition. Very few people know of the heinous crimes committed by the Portuguese invaders in the southwestern coast of India. The Portuguese Christian Missionaries were hellbent on converting as many Hindus to Christianity as possible by any means necessary. We have heard stories about their brutality since childhood.
One method of torture, we had heard, was to invert the cross and use the long end to rape Hindu men and women in their backside until they agreed to convert to Christianity. The interesting part of this story is that Hindu storytellers never associated this evil use of the inverted Cross to the spiritual meaning of the Cross. They used as the tale to teach people how religion taken to an extreme can pervert the sacred symbols of that religion. From their wisdom and the term Anti-Christ, we derived the concept of the Anti-Cross.
In our opinion, no Christian would ever describe the above evil methods as a defect of Christianity even though the perpetrators were Christian missionaries. No Christian accepts the evil deeds of the Nazis as a defect of Christianity even though perpetrators like Himmler, Borman & Eichman were Christians.
And the Jewish victims of Nazi crimes concur. We have never heard any Jewish leader, any Israeli Consul ever link any Christian symbol to Nazi crimes.
Then why does virtually every Christian-Jewish entity link the Nazi symbol of death to the exquisitely peaceful and spiritual symbol called the Svastik.
It could be sheer ignorance. Or it could be racism induced terminology. Remember the post WWII period? It was the period of Europe, America and the newly born Israel. India was not on anybody’s radar. So it was easy at that time to simply call the Nazi symbol of evil as the Swastika.
This we call as “laissez-faire racism“. Not an active, deliberate form of racism. But an indifferent sort of racism, an uncaring racism about a far way culture that isn’t on anybody’s radar screen. Today the world is different and we think it is high time for Jewish-Christian organizations to eliminate their laissez-faire racist terminology.
So we again make an appeal to every News Organization, to every Jewish & Christian organization, to the State of Israel to stop calling the Nazi symbol as Swastika.
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