The Story of the Swastika

In 1920, the leader of an obscure German political party

made what seemed at the time an insignificant decision.

Adolf Hitler adopted a symbol

for his National Democratic Socialist Party.

It was a symbol which, over the next two decades,

would become synonymous with hatred, fear,

and a regime that slaughtered millions.

The swastika.

The swastika means Nazism. It means evil, death and genocide.

In Auschwitz, it was an emblem that I hated

and I didn't even want to see it.

But the swastika has a long and complex history.

For thousands of years, this has been a religious symbol,

with a sacred past. A sign of benevolence, luck and good fortune.

And for the nearly one billion Hindus around the world today,

it lies at the heart of their religious practices and beliefs.

For me personally, the swastika means hope. It means purity,

it means auspiciousness.

The swastika will be used by Hindus to evoke a sense of the sacred.

To draw the attention of the divine to human undertakings.

But because of its recent past, in the West, the Hindu swastika

has sometimes provoked hostility.

I've got a tattoo of a swastika on my lip.

And when I got it done, the tattoo artist was a little taken aback

and he was like, "Ah, Jew killer." And I said, "No."

In the week when Hindus across Britain are celebrating

the holy festival of Diwali, we tell the story of their sacred symbol.

And we bring together members of the communities

for whom it has the most potent meaning,

to see if a new experience of the swastika

could break down long-held prejudices.

It's very beautiful. I mean, it's obviously quite different,

being in gold compared to red and black.

Can Hindus restore the reputation of a symbol

they believe invokes the blessings of the divine?

Sunday morning.

Chalfont Cricket Club in leafy Buckinghamshire.

A place associated with English teas

and the gentle competitiveness of the weekend sportsman.

Certainly not a place you'd expect to see a symbol

most commonly associated with the fascist regimes of pre-war Germany.

But today is an exception.

The club is host to a Hindu wedding celebration,

in which the swastika plays a vital role.

As the guests congregate and the happy couple arrive,

the Hindu priest has an important task...

..Placing a swastika in front of the sacred area

where the couple will sit during the ceremony.

And the meaning of this swastika

is a world away from that of Nazi Germany.

It's a diagram.

The moment you look at the diagram, it should invoke the peace

within you.

So it has the swastika.

"Swasti" means well-being, "swastika" - asking the well-being of the gods.

A statue of their elephant-headed god, Ganesh,

is placed at the centre of the swastika.

Ganesh is the remover of all obstacles.

And as the priest rotates him,

it's believed any hindrances to the ceremony are removed.

For Hindus, the swastika isn't only a sacred power for good,

but an essential element of any rite of passage.

Ramesh Pattni is the father of the groom.

The word "swastik" actually comes from the Sanskrit word

for a state of auspiciousness.

Wherever any ceremony is performed - and Hindus have got 16 ceremonies

during the lifetime, and each one of them

will have one way or the other in which the swastik is represented.

In the wedding, the swastik, it is the most important.

Because the wedding ceremony marks a transition

from one period of life to another.

HE CHANTS

And therefore all the auspiciousness is required.

Warm the hands and get up! Yes!

It's the first exercise as wife and husband!

As unlikely as it might seem to those not brought up

in the Hindu faith, for the Hindus here today,

a wedding without a swastika would be unusual.

I now declare you wife and husband. May God bless you.

You look beautiful. You'll live happily ever after.

For this young couple,

the swastika ensures their marriage is blessed by the gods.

It's a far cry from its associations in the West.

Most western people when they see it,

they see a Nazi German symbol.

Shaunaka Rishi Das has been a Hindu priest for more than 30 years.

It is interesting that Hindus themselves,

they're brought up with the swastika, it's perfectly normal for them.

You see all the children at the wedding,

they're just seeing it from birth. Then they go to school

and learn that the Nazis used it in this way.

But you have to understand that here's a tradition that's ancient.

And the Germans borrow it from a different culture and misuse it

over less than two decades, and all of a sudden it develops

an internationally bad reputation.

HE CHANTS

Of all the symbols produced by ancient and modern man,

this is the most contradictory.

And its origins are shrouded in mystery.

Images of the swastika have been found across the world.

And the earliest examples date back thousands of years.

Well, the swastika's one of those strange symbols that you find

in lots of different cultures.

You see it in China and Japan, you see it in Mongolia,

you see it in the ancient Mediterranean world, in Greece,

even over in Native American cultures and in the British Isles as well.

But despite the swastika's prolific-ness,

its original meaning is an enigma.

Perhaps it's just a simple, elegant geometry.

Maybe it was a solar symbol.

It's so universal that we can't really find a first point of use,

it just has a kind of instinctive appeal across the world.

Some of the most ancient swastikas were found here, in India.

And over the centuries, it's been adopted across the Subcontinent

by many different religions.

Hindus, Buddhists and Jains all see it a holy symbol.

It's displayed just about everywhere, to bring good fortune.

And there's one time of year that it's specially prominent.

At the Hindu festival of Diwali.

It's a five day celebration to mark the Hindu New Year.

Also known as the festival of lights,

it marks the triumph of good over evil.

And in India, the streets are a riot of noise and colour.

The festival honours deities such as the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi,

and so the swastika is painted on the account books

for the new financial year, to ensure prosperity.

But it's not just in the East that the swastika features

in Diwali festivities.

This is Neasden Temple in North West London.

It's the spiritual home to thousands of Hindus.

And every Diwali, the ladies of the temple

spend hours making an incredible display, known as a rangoli,

like this one, in which the swastika plays a central role.

Rangoli patterns are literal forms of art

and they're created by hand, generally by women who use rice

or coloured rice.

Avni Chag has been celebrating Diwali here for most of her life.

Diwali represents the festival of lights.

If you go back to physics lessons, you'll always be taught

how the spectrum of colours originates from white light.

And I think that's completely honoured within these beautiful

geometric patterns and these beautiful designs that are created

during Diwali. And most commonly you will see the Hindu swastika.

And for some it may mean prosperity, for some it may mean good luck.

For me personally, the swastika means hope.

For Hindus who've grown up with the swastika,

finding out that this emblem of light has been used

for the darkest of purposes, can be horrifying.

I was pretty much born with the symbol surrounding me,

and at special occasions,

festivals, this symbol would be prevalent.

And then when I finally started studying about the Second World War

in history lessons at school, I freaked out.

I saw the symbol and I was just completely gobsmacked.

Seeing it in this textbook associated with the Holocaust, with genocide,

with racial intolerance, was quite a shock.

And I wondered how it could've been mutated from something so positive

to something to so negative.

So how did this sacred symbol come to symbolise

one of the most evil regimes in history?

The swastika's metamorphosis began with an archaeological dig

in the 19th century.

In 1874, excavations started at a site believed to be

the ancient city of Troy in Turkey.

They were led by a German businessman

named Heinrich Schliemann.

Schliemann was an adventurer and his real mission

was to find the real Troy, the Troy of the Homeric epics.

Now, as he dug, he found spheres. Strange spheres with an equator

round them bearing the image of what we would call the swastika

and plenty of fragments of pottery bearing swastikas.

What Schliemann had uncovered was to have deadly consequences.

His work would inadvertently lay the foundations for a new mythology

of the swastika to be constructed.

One which would transform it from a sacred symbol of benevolence

into the Nazi emblem of the Aryan master race.

Now, Schliemann didn't know what these symbols were.

But there were scholars who were willing to interpret these objects

and these symbols for him.

One of these men was a man called Emile Burnouf.

Burnouf was a scholar of ancient Indian literature,

and it was to a Hindu epic called the Rig Veda

that he turned to try and make sense of Schliemann's find.

In the Rig Vedas, there are a people called the Arias mentioned,

and in the lexicon of the Rig Vedas, the word "swastika" is mentioned.

And scholars like Burnouf put the swastika together with the Arias,

and said, "Ah! This was the ancient symbol of these people, the Arias,

"and these people were invaders, warriors, who came from the North,

"who displaced the existing people of India.

"And these were the same people who we find represented

"in the pottery fragments of Troy."

Two entirely unconnected mythologies were becoming one.

The people of ancient Troy were being fused with the Aryans

of the Hindu Rig Vedas.

And the swastika was the symbol that Burnouf claimed united them.

So, really, the swastika fragment became for pseudo-scholars

like Burnouf, the perfect excuse to build a new mythology,

and invent a single pan-European colonial warrior race

using the swastika as their emblem.

For Hitler, a symbol with such a mythology - albeit invented -

was the perfect emblem for his ambitions for Germany.

The Nazis were involved in this huge project of trying to create

a new history for themselves.

They weren't really happy with their association with Christian history

because they saw that as having Hebrew, Jewish roots.

And it was that notion of a history that was being kind of imagined

out of these different symbols and sources that Hitler wanted to use

to give the Nazi movement its own foundation.

Within decades, the swastika had been ripped from its ancient religious roots,

and become shorthand for the Nazis and their chilling agenda.

It was perhaps the most successful example of cultural theft in history.

When you look at the swastika,

you don't think this is the symbol of Hinduism.

No, the swastika means Nazism.

It means evil, death and genocide.

With its new connotations across Europe so entrenched, it seems unlikely

that the Hindu symbol can ever rid itself of the shadow of Nazism.

Especially, when for those who suffered directly in the Holocaust, it unlocks terrifying memories.

I was taken into my first camp at 11 and a half.

It was just a horrendous place.

Arek Hersh lost 81 members of his family under the Nazis.

SS men were there...

..and they were beating people, and hanging people and...

..just a few of us survived.

But you see the swastika everywhere.

I abhorred it, actually.

I hated to look at it even...

..because I suffered very much under it.

And even for young Jews today, it's a symbol they still struggle with.

I do shudder when I see it.

It's something that is very infamous in the Jewish community.

And it's something that I think it would be very difficult...to change.

The Nazi theft of the Hindu sacred symbol changed

the perception of the swastika in the west, forever.

And yet at the time in India,

it was something most Hindus were unaware of.

The vast majority of Hindus especially in rural areas, mostly illiterate,

obviously did not know for a very long time

how it had been used by the Nazis.

But for the educated classes, I think there was a sense of being appalled.

And amongst Hindus today,

feelings against the Nazis' theft of the swastika run high.

Germany thought they can hijack this sacred symbol

from the Vedic culture

and use it you know to enforce their white supremacy and all that.

And, people are very angry and upset that a sacred symbol so dear to them

in their religion is hijacked by somebody like this.

After the war, the feeling against the swastika was so strong,

that in Germany and Poland, it was banned.

And since then it's become shorthand, not for divine blessings,

but for race hatred.

It's a misappropriation that's had a real impact on Hindus today.

The difficult thing is that the swastika that Hitler uses

and the swastika that Indian culture uses, really do look a lot the same.

Often the Indian swastika will have dots between the four arms,

but there aren't any definite differences that you can always use to separate them out.

And that can make it hard for people to distinguish which symbol they're looking at.

And it's this confusion, in a society with little understanding of Hinduism,

that's led to the Hindu symbol inadvertently finding itself under attack.

In 2007 German MEPs proposed a ban of the public use of swastikas

right across the European Union.

It was a proposition that upset many Hindus.

The British Hindus woke up to this

and they carried out a campaign to bring awareness

to the members of the British Parliament...

..to make them understand how sacred this swastika is to the Hindu faith.

The British Hindu response was that this was a Eurocentric proposal.

It wasn't taking into account the bigger picture.

Millions of people use this symbol on a daily basis.

What had started out as an anxiety about Nazism,

had turned into a fight for religious freedom.

If Europe wants to be seen as a truly liberal society,

then it has to really be liberal in the bigger picture.

It has to let go of its history maybe...to look at how this symbol has been used in the world

in such a positive way for thousands of years, compared to the European historical aberration

that needs to be recognised

but also needs to be balanced with the bigger picture.

The reaction stopped the ban in its tracks...

..and British Hindus were free to display their sacred symbol once more.

But even though it's not illegal in Britain to show the swastika,

Hindus who do display it, sometimes face misunderstandings and even insults.

One of the things about Hindus is we don't always explain

ourselves very well and children if they take into school

something which displays the swastika, if their friends

and even the teachers don't know the meaning, they sometimes get chastised

or even worse, you know bullied, for being associated with Nazism.

Bharti Taylor spends much of her time teaching children about Hinduism.

It's a holy symbol for us, whether you draw it other way or this way.

For her, the key to Hindus being able to show the sign without fear, is knowledge.

I think we should have more education so that everybody understands

that the symbol is meant to be for the good, not an evil symbol.

But can Western, European perceptions really be changed?

Well, where better to start, than with the community for whom

the swastika holds the greatest fears...the Jews.

Today, Josh Dubell, a member of a London synagogue,

has been invited to the local Hindu Temple in Neasden.

The Hindus want to show him the beautiful rangoli they've created.

and to talk to him about their connection with the swastika,

in the hope that he might begin to see it in a different light.

If I saw a swastika on the wall in my local area,

I would report it straight away as an anti-semitic attack.

It's something that is synonymous with erm...with hate crimes.

I can understand that when Josh comes he'll come with some idea of the swastika,

and so it'll be interesting to see how he feels when he does see it,

when it's portrayed within the temple.

I don't know that much about it as a Hindu symbol.

So I really hope to learn what it means to the Hindu faith.

Avni is going to show him round.

Hello. Hello. Hi, Josh, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too, how are you? I'm good, welcome to Neasden Temple.

Thank you, very happy to be here. Yeah?

And the first swastika Josh encounters appears before he even gets inside.

The main symbol that I'd like to point out to you is on the doors.

And that's the swastika. Ah, yes.

And I guess what that represents is that it's a sign of welcome,

and it's welcoming and wishing them good luck as they enter the temple to pray. Mmm.

It's really interesting. I mean me and my people seeing that

symbol in the past hasn't really provided me with that luck, but...

Especially as defined as you can see it here, yeah.

How do you feel about it?

It's, it's just a little erm...

..taken aback a little bit by the erm...seeing it like this.

It's obviously quite different being gold compared to red and black.

But it's erm...it's really, really beautiful.

Shall we go on in? Yeah, sure.

The swastikas on the doors had a real impact on Josh, and what

lies inside is even more striking.

How do you feel now seeing this?

I mean this is more in red now. Oh, right.

So this is called a rangoli and I guess it's an expression of worship.

And you'll find it at times of really big religious occasions or ceremonies.

The swastika represents prosperity and good luck and wealth.

How do you feel like in terms of the shape or is it something that's different?

Obviously to me, it's the most anti-Jewish symbol that

I've ever seen in terms of the death of a lot of people in my religion.

And er...I mean it seems a little bit less harsh.

OK, yeah, because of the curl? Yeah, I think so.

You see, when I was growing up,

I always had this positive view of the swastika,

so I never understood how it could mean something, you know, that it may mean to you.

As Josh's visit draws to an end, he's got a lot to think about.

I was taken aback on the doors but now you talk about it a little bit more,

and that's why I think dialogue is really, really important.

We talk a lot about what separates us, but hopefully we can

use this symbol to come together and talk about the things that we have in common.

Avni and Josh's experiences of the swastika are worlds apart,

but their meeting has started to break down long-held prejudice.

It's still very, very strange and a little alien to me,

but it's actually changed some of my opinions about the swastika.

Maybe it can be used for good.

I think Josh's visit is like a first step in the Jewish community

coming to understand that the swastika means so many different things.

He understood that it doesn't necessarily have to mean one thing, universally.

It can mean different things for different people.

I don't know whether the Jewish community will feel the same way as I do,

but you know what, hopefully we can really start to educate ourselves that this symbol

can be used for something positive.

Perhaps this ancient Hindu symbol, which for so long has held such different meanings

for these two religious communities, might actually bring them closer together.

And as Hindus across Britain prepare to celebrate Diwali,

the festival that marks the banishment of darkness and the coming of light,

maybe it's a first step towards the swastika being reclaimed for good.

I think over time the swastika will be redeemed in Europe.

Just because something in one context looks bad doesn't mean we slam it.

We have to look at the bigger picture always.

So the change will come, it'll just take time.

Wouldn't it be nice if one day there are people who saw the swastika being used in public

and said, "oh that's an Indian symbol.

"Hindus use it to signify auspiciousness and blessing."

And when they later come to see the Nazi use of the symbol,

they think, "Gosh that's horrific, that's really inappropriate."

If we can get to that point then finally Hitler will really have been defeated.

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