All language subtitles for The Story of the Swastika (GAMALI HAÇ) 720p HDTV EN Sub

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.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd