The display of a ‘swastika’ during a Pro-Palestine rally in London on Saturday, 30 March 2024, prompted a ten-minute conversation between a Jewish woman and two Metropolitan Police officers, during which one of the officers explained to her that the swastika needed to be “taken in context”, even as the offender was being arrested under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. The matter did not end there as video clips of the encounter were uploaded to social media and shared online, provoking much dissatisfaction among viewers. Jocelyn Weiss, an American currently resident in London, who subsequently described herself in ‘The Jewish Chronicle’ as a “left-leaning freelance documentary maker and researcher”, concluded on LBC Radio’s breakfast programme on 2 April that “There needs to be anti-bias training programmes in regards to anti-Semitism with the Met.”
The term swastika refers to a family of crosses, whose straight arms (or limbs) are of equal lengths, perpendicular to each other, and bent at right angles at their tips, while facing in the same rotary direction, which is usually clockwise. The word is derived from the Sanskrit roots ‘su’ (good) and ‘asti’ (to prevail) and means either ‘well-being’, ‘good fortune’, or ‘prosperity.’ The swastika was a religious symbol in many different ancient cultures, including those in South Asia, Mesopotamia, East Asia (China, Japan), the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, all of Africa, Native North America (southwestern tribes such as the Navajo and Hopi), and South and Central America (among the Mayas). It also appeared in early Christian and Byzantine art as the gammadion cross (crux gammata), which was constructed from four Greek gammas attached to a common base.
In India, in particular, the swastika remains an auspicious religious and cultural symbol for Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. In Hindu philosophy, the swastika is considered representative of various things that come in fours, including the four objectives of life, the four stages of life, the four ages or cyclical times, the four seasons, the four directions, and the four Vedas (core Hindu scriptures). Hindus use the swastika to inscribe temples and ritual altars, to adorn the front entrances of their homes during festivities, to consecrate new homes, and to mark greeting cards, wedding invitations, or the opening pages of account books at the beginning of the financial year. The Hindu swastika is a right-facing swastika, with a horizontal baseline, which rotates in a clockwise direction and is considered a symbol of the Sun. The left-facing swastika, the sauvastika, rotates in a counterclockwise direction and often represents darkness.
Before the Nazi misappropriation of the swastika, it was considered innocuous and used widely, being incorporated as a motif in architectural designs, military insignia, corporate logos, marketing campaigns, and for various other purposes across Europe and North America.
In the late 19th century, the swastika began to feature in German nationalist and occultist circles. It all began in 1871, with the discoveries of the German antiquarian and amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at the mound of Hissarlik, on the Aegean coast of Türkiye, at the site of the lost city of ancient Troy. Schliemann unearthed 1,800 depictions of swastikas on pottery fragments, which he linked to similar shapes on German antiquities, speculating that it was a “significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors.” Schliemann’s work led to the adoption of the swastika by various far-right Völkisch (ethnic nationalist) movements, a process which benefited from the advocacy of the occultist Guido von List (1848-1919).
The swastika flag was formally adopted by the Nazi Party as its official emblem at the party’s Salzburg Congress on 7 August 1920. A black swastika was placed within a white circle that was surrounded by a red background-a colour scheme based upon the colours of the flag of Imperial Germany (1871-1918). The Nazi swastika, often referred to as the Hakenkreuz (hooked cross), is a right-facing swastika, tilted at 45 degrees to a horizontal baseline, and rotating in a clockwise direction. Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Nazi flag replaced the flag of the Weimar Republic. A decree of 19 May 1933 then prevented unauthorised commercial use of the Hakenkreuz, which was to become the most identifiable symbol of Nazism, appearing on arm bands, party badges, medallions, election posters, and sundry other artefacts, all characteristic of Nazi Germany. The Reich Flag Law of 15 September 1935 then confirmed the Nazi flag as the sole official national flag of the German Reich, which it remained until 1945.
The Hakenkreuz endures as an indelible emblem of the Dark Age of the Third Reich, during which a lethal cocktail of Pan-Germanism; German expansionism (Lebensraum, or living space); racial pseudo-science and eugenics; the concept of a shared “Aryan” culture; a belief in occultism, neo-paganism, and Norse mythology; and rampant anti-Semitism, all backed by cynical legislation, repressive political violence, and structured mass murder led to the genocide of the Holocaust.
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the now-criminalised Hakenkreuz became what was widely considered to be a hate symbol, only to be taken up by diverse anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi, and White supremacist groups across the world. The Hakenkreuz, along with other Nazi symbols and gestures, remains banned across most of Europe, and in Russia and Brazil, but not in the UK and US and most of the rest of the world. Even within Europe, Germany failed to introduce an EU-wide ban of the Nazi swastika in 2007. Most recently, the state of Victoria became the first Australian territorial jurisdiction to ban the public display of the Hakenkreuz in 2022, while making “exceptions for the cultural and historical significance of the Swastika to Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other faith communities.”
It seems that the unqualified use of the term swastika can be misleading. What most people seem to object to is the inappropriate display of the Nazi swastika-the Hakenkreuz-in public, outside of museums, documentaries, and films depicting events of the Third Reich. At the same time, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists seek to “reclaim” their own versions of the swastika for religious and cultural purposes, without offending the victims of Nazism and their descendants. Despite the continuing devastation in Gaza today, there can, however, can be no reason to justify the revival of the Hakenkrauz- a hate symbol of the previous century- in response to unconnected events of the 21st century.
Ashis Banerjee