Stolen icon say Hindus
Can the Hindus Switch to this??
BBC NEWS | Europe | Hindus opposing EU swastika ban Geez. FYI
Hindus in Europe have joined forces against a German proposal to ban the display of the swastika across the European Union, a Hindu leader said.
Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain said the swastika had been a symbol of peace for thousands of years before the Nazis adopted it.
He said a ban on the symbol would discriminate against Hindus.
Found by London Correspondent Sergio Gasparrini
It’s a bit rich saying that the Nazi’s “adopted” the swastika. That’s like saying dubya “adopted” the 2000 election!
Agreed #1. Made me laugh!
#3: honestly, being German myself, I think we have larger problems that just this.
I think it’s time to win back a lot of things that were “adopted” by the Nazis during these years. German language has far too many words that are still “adopted” and if the Hindus want to use that symbol that they have been using for 100 times longer than it has been used in the 3rd reich, so be it. We don’t want to go back to those years, but we should finally get free of them. And, besides that, I think I have never seen a Hindu fly a red flag, white circle, black swastika anywhere, so the differentiation would be clear and in 20 years from now, the association of the symbol with the Nazis would start to fade as today, the association of “Hammer and Sicher” with the former eastern block has almost faded.
pj
A friend of mine just got back from a “vacation” in India. He was shocked by the number of swastikas he saw. From their placements you could tell the symbol had been in use there well before the Nazis.
3. “I have Indian colleagues trying to convince me (a German) that Hitler chose the swastika, because he was impressed with the Indians fighting the British Empire.”
Oh yeah, Hitler, aka, Mr Pure Perfect Race took a symbol from a race who to this day will shit and urinate in the water they drink! A race who can’t even create a sewer system is hardly one to be deserved of any esteem, even by Hitler.
if i wouldnt know better, id say hitler was killing germans instead of jews (and others ofcourse)
It’s a sun symbol. I don’t see the need to ban it or any symbol for that matter.
#4 … Well said!
#10. Yes, and banning the swastika will make neo-Nazi-ism go away? now who’s naive?
banning things like the swastika and holocaust denial just enables these scum to claim victim status.
and I would proudly wrap myself in the mantle “free speech obsessed American.”
The German term Swastika comes from the Sanskrit word Svastikah, meaning “to be fortunate.” The word stem SVASTI can be divided into SU (SV), meaning “good or well,” and ASTI (ASTIKAH), meaning “is” or “being.” In modern India, the word means “auspicious.”
The Swastika has been a symbol in Buddhism long long before Hitler and the Nazi’s came and went. The image is found in thousand year old statutues and symbols of buddhism and often found in symbols of the feel of the Buddha. To ban the Swastika in the context of Buddhist and Hindu symbolism goes beyond the line but then these are the same Europeans who put loony tunes alternate Historian David Irving in jail for arguing that the Holocast didn’t happen.
I’m not surprised that Dvorak doesn’t know any of this, after all he didn’t know the difference between the Japanese flag and the Chinese flag a few months back either.
10. “I find your comment utterly naive…”
I find your comment utterly without sense. You admit that the neo-Nazi problem is “actually getting worse” but yet you argue that the ban on Nazi symbols needs to be continued?!
Isn’t the the whole point of the ban to stop the neo-Nazi movement?! If the ban has the opposite effect, which even you admit it does, why continue it?
You’re full of crap Gadlaw. What flags are you talking about? They are easily identifiable. And I know the difference and I doubt you are better travelled than I — inother words I’ve seen the flags flying in their home countries. Not knowing the history of the word “swastika” is like missing a trivia question. I doubt if 1 in 100,000 people know it and I’m not even convinced your history of it is really accurate.
16. “Over 50 years the ban in Western Germany has worked very well…”
It worked well even though you admit the problem is getting worse?! God, I’m glad you’re not a doctor. You’d stick to the wrong treatment well past the patient’s death!
“And by the way, there are way more Neo nazis (white supremacists) in the US due to your freely available Nazi propaganda than in Germany.”
First, how many more? Twice as many? Three times as many? Four times as many? Considering the population of the US is nearly four times greater than Gernmany’s that shouldn’t be too surprising.
Second, how do you know how many you have in Germany? By law you force them to hide. The difference is that in the US the neo-Nazi movement is free to be in the open. If a problem exists, everyone, including the police knows who’s involved.
I’m not entirely sure why you think hiding a problem solves it. Heck, you even have admitted its getting worse. Ooops, not just worse, but “worse and worse”!
Maybe your physicians could come up with a great new cure for cancer: Outlaw all symptoms of cancer and the underlying problem will mysteriously disappear. Right?
“Maybe this is hard to understand for Americans, but for us it’s already unexeptable to have even one racism motivated murder per year.”
If you can find a single news story in the past year involving a member of an American neo-Nazi group killing a Jewish person in the US, I’d love to read it.
Where are the free speach advocates? Is that only an American concept?
I love how the Europussies claim that we (USA) barely have any freedom. At least we don’t oppressive Orwellian hate speach laws and an almost all out ban on videogames (Germany),
#6
Get out of your little bubble. Go out, and see the new world order. This is not 1920, this is 2007. The richest man in Britian is, ironically, an Indian. If you knew something about economics, I’d try to explain it to you, but since you don’t, i’ll keep it simple. The country that you are talking about is the 10th biggest economy in dollar terms, and 4th biggest in PPP terms. As for poverty, it’s come down below 20%, and soon it’ll be below 10%. This is the century of India and China, like the 1900s was the century of America.
I’m appalled that the admins allow such racial comments on this site.
>And the Nazis thought of it as an ancient Germanic runic symbol.
I’d say it was the Indian version that they took, especially since some people view it as a symbol of military might,based on the design of a fort.
Also, the concept of white supremacy existed in India thousands of years ago, as the word Aryan refers to settlers in India who were very white and dominated the rest of the country. Ironically their descendants are now not white.
Maybe these Hindus should start burning cars, and then they might get what they want.
The Haken Kreuz is a primeval symbol, thousands of years old. Our recent horrid histories, nor our present political fantasises shall not change a thing. An hundred years from now, none shall care what any say today.
It was taken and abused by the most vile sort of humanity, sullied by same, yet its basic truth will prevail. This symbol shall survive the Nazis, and it shall survive this inconsequential discussion.
Laugh all you want, but the Hindus (and Buddhists) can clearly prove their point. The Nazis were not the first to use this symbol — not even close.
I’ve seen, with my own eyes, “swastikas” that predate the Nazis by centuries. I’ve seen them in both Japanese and Indian museums. I’ve also seen the symbol — but in reverse — in tile in and old mosque. This is no surprise — it’s a pretty intuitive symbol.
Think about it as a hypothetical — the KKK adopted the cross as their symbol of racism and hatred, burning them on lawns and putting them on their robes. How would Christians react if the government designated them a “hate symbol” (which is how they clearly were used) and banned them? You think Bill O’Reilly would stay silent about that?
#20-
The aryan invasion theory was a myth propagated by Max Muller. http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/vedic-upanisads/aryan-invasion.html
In short, no. There was no invasion of India, and whites didn’t not magically turn into Asians, because there were no whites in the first place.
If you believe this theory, then I guess you also believe what Hitler meant/stood for, which is unfortunate.
#10: as you, correctly, point out, the problem of the “extreme rights” is not primarily a political problem but a social. Huge unemployment, the percieved lack of structure, the fact that we wessies (people who had the luxury to live in the western part of the divided nation) still have a general picture of the ossies (the opposite of the wessies, derived from west and ost(=east)) that is anything but positive, lack of education and thus perspective. These are some of the reasons why we lose younge people for the society. They become angry young people. Angry young people try to do something to seek revenge from the society that treats them so badly. So what do they do? They join forces with the most evil group they can find. Outlaws seek outlaw groups. The more we demonize the extreme right, the more it will be interesting for people who want to show us how angry they are on society. Being bad is actually being good, if you are in this position.
So let’s go on and create and foster this icon. I’m sure we can keep pushing many young people their way. And once they have assimilated with those groups, we just call them stupid and push them even further over the edge.
The only way to fix this is to give young people perspectives. To give them a meaning in life, to show them that society as a whole has a place for them, actually needs them. Those that are over the edge already will ridicule us for this, but they will also ridicule us for our feeble attempts to forbid what they do and think.
Remember what happened when they tried to forbid the NPD (the right wing party)? It went all down the drain as it showed that some 50% of the party leaders were actually working for various state and federal secret services. That’s how to ridicule yourself.
But back to my original thesis: the first step to win the battle against this kind of extremism is dignity. It’s finally time to stop talking about “ossies” and “wessies” and how one is better than the other. We (the west) have been so unbelievably arrogant, we’ve given the former GDR citizens the feeling that they were poor family coming to our mansion and that they were well, not really unwelcome, but we didn’t invite them in either as we didn’t want to share. That has not changed to this date.
Let’s start here instead of forbidding a mis-used symbol all over Europe just because we have our problems here at home.
pj
Oh, and one more thing, Stefan, The swastika ban in the west has worked so well? That’s much like your diabetic analogy. If a diabetic is in a position to buy all the treatment and special food he needs, he’ll be healthy, no matter if the doctor orders him to wear a t-shirt saying “I don’t eat sugar” or not. the BRD has enjoyed unparalleled economic growth in the 50s and the 60s. We didn’t know the word unemployment. Well, times have changed. Now we have people who don’t have the luxury to treat their desease, but we still hope we can cure it by ordering them to wear the abovementioned shirts.
pj
23. “Seems like you are not interested in a debate, since you come again with the same argument as before which I have already addressed.”
Oh, you addressed it already? Gee, I must have missed it. So, first you say the problem is getting “worse and worse” but then you some where wrote that ban is actually making everything better. Gee, exactly where did you write that?
Please, provide some empirical evidence that the ban on Nazi symbols decreases Nazi sentiment. Which is hard because you have already admitted the problem is getting “worse and worse.” Heck, please provide any empirical evidence that wearing Nazi symbols causes people to have pro-Nazi sentiments. Thanks!
I think you have the causal connection reversed. People don’t become neo-Nazi’s because they wear or own Nazi symbols, they wear and own Nazi symbols after they’ve decided to become neo-Nazis.
Thus, the problem you should be addressing is not the symbols, as they are nothing more than the symptom. You should addressing the cause: What causes a person to want to be a neo-Nazi?
“Geez, you like to oversimplify, don’t you.”
Hey, I’m only responding to what you wrote. You wrote that the problem is getting “worse and worse” but that the ban should continue anyway. It seemed idiotic so I decided to point it out.
“How about a story about the murder of a black person by a racist?:
We’re not talking about racists. We’re talking about the neo-Nazi movement. Where have you been?
In case you didn’t know, Nazi’s weren’t necessarily racist. Sure, they hated various races and were hell bent on eliminating them. But that was just a coincidence. You see, the Nazis were actually Xenophobic. They hated any and all differences.
Thus, they killed white Aryan males who were gay. They killed white Aryan males who disagreed with the Nazi party. They killed white Aryan males who were academics. They didn’t just want to eliminate races, but wanted to eliminate any diversity or any differences of opinion.
To equate Nazis with mere racists is a complete understatement.
27. Oops, I forgot to respond to something 23 wrote:
“If you were a doctor and a diabetic in worsening condition shows up…”
First, of all, you apparently know nothing about diabetes. My dad has it. My best friend has it. My boss’ son has it. You know what, genuine treatment for diabetes does not make the problem “worse and worse.” So I’m not entirely sure what that analogy was supposed to prove.
The only time diabetes gets worse is when the patient ignores the treatment. Mmm… could the people of Germany be ignoring something important?
#3 Stefan wrote:
“I fully support the EU ban of the swastika. A ‘Hakenkreuzflagge’ flying above someones home would be the most disturbing thing I could imagine seeing”
I have little problem agreeing with that. However, the guy living in that house would have some problems arguing that he is a “national democrat”.
Ban the hakenkreuz, and you turn some neo-Nazis into martyrs of “free speech” (as if waving a Nazi flag was speaking). Their ideology is not beat, they just start waving a normal flag instead. The Norwegian flag has gained some popularity in certain German groups, I have heard, turning also that into a symbol of hatred. Maybe they will use the German flag? Maybe they will use the Odal Rune?
What will then be achieved by a ban? Comfort? Maybe even historical amnesia?
The Odal Rune has been banned as a group symbol in the 90s in Germany.
pj
I guess all the Scandinavian-level white native Indians I’ve seen must have been albinos.
Even if the theory os false, it was clearly beliebed by many Germans, and that still explains why Hitler adopted the swastika.
#32, I’m not sure what theory you’re refering to, but the swastika was never called that in German but “Hakenkreuz” and was adopted from the nordic background. After all, if you look at Finnish airplanes of the time, they wear a light blue swastika, wich was not due to anything German.
pj
I have to come out on the side of free speech here; to give an example, a blanket ban of this sort would keep half of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Asian collection out of Europe. The sheer loss of art history it would represent would be incredible. Do they plan on defacing Mosques in Spain to rid them of the symbol too? Will ancient wooden churches be burnt to the ground, or will they just cover them over with cloth, like Ashcroft covering the statues in the rotunda to keep the boobies out of his virgin eyes? Ban a swastika on a white and/or red flag if you wish, but a blanket ban (if implemented with that famous German efficiency) would be an act of cultural destruction much like that the Taliban committed. Of course, given that the victims would be Hindus and Buddhists, they will take the hit, and merely complain about it, which Europe should be thankful for.
#32
So it many Germans believe in it, it’ll be true? I’ve given you evidence, and you say many Germans believe it. Well, i’d rather believe facts than stories and myths propagated by supremists.
White native Indians? I’d love to meet them. I’m 20 and I’ve travelled throughout my country, and I’m yet to see ‘White’ native Indians.