Faiths try to save sacred symbol corrupted by Hitler

Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

“My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that stands for peace and good fortune. Indigenous people worldwide used it similarly.

But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitler’s hakenkreuz or the hooked cross — a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neonazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitler’s symbol to stoke fear and hate.

Over the past decade, as the Asian diaspora grew in North America, calls to reclaim the swastika as a sacred symbol became louder. These minority faith communities are being joined by Native Americans whose ancestors used it in healing rituals.

Deo believes she and people of other faiths shouldn’t have to sacrifice or apologise for a sacred symbol simply because it is often conflated with its tainted version.

“To me, that’s intolerable,” she said. Yet to others, redeeming the swastika is unthinkable. Holocaust survivors could be retraumatised by the symbol that represents a “concept that stood for the annihilation of an entire people” and the horrors they experienced, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North

America’s Centre on Holocaust Survivor Care. Her grandparents met at a displaced persons’ camp in Austria after World War II.

“I recognise the swastika as a symbol of hate,” she said.

Steven Heller, author of Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?, said it is “a charged symbol for so many whose loved ones were . . . brutally murdered”. His great-grandfather died during the Holocaust.

The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being”. It has been used in Hindu prayers, carved into the Jains’ emblem, marked Buddhist temple sites and stood for the four elements for Zoroastrians.

The symbol is ubiquitous in India today. It also has been found in the Roman catacombs as well as Greece,

Iran, Ethiopia, Spain and Ukraine.

It was revived during the 19th century excavations in the city of Troy by a German archaeologist, who connected it to Aryan culture. The Nazi Party adopted it in 1920.

In North America, in the early 20th century, swastikas turned up in architectural features, military insignia and team logos.

In his 2018 book titled The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross: Rescuing a Symbol of Peace from the Forces of Hate, T.K. Nakagaki, a Buddhist priest, says Hitler referred to it as the hooked cross or hakenkreuz. “You cannot call it a symbol of evil or [deny] other facts that have existed for hundreds of years, just because of Hitler.”

The Coalition of Hindus of North America is among several faith groups leading the effort to differentiate the swastika from the hakenkreuz. They supported a new California law that criminalises the public display of it, making an exception for the sacred swastika.

Pushpita Prasad, a spokesperson for the Hindu group, called it a victory, but said the legislation unfortunately labels both the sacred symbol and Hitler’s as swastikas.

It’s led to self-censorship. Vikas Jain, a Cleveland doctor, said his family hid images of the symbol when they had visitors because of the lack of understanding.

Jain says he stands in solidarity with the Jewish community, but is sad that he cannot freely practise his Jain faith.

Jeff Kelman, a New Hampshirebased Holocaust historian, believes the hakenkreuz and swastika were distinct. He is optimistic about the symbol’s redemption. —AP