What does aryan and swastika really mean-an analysis by Ravi

Sacrificer           Ravi
Sacrifice code       wfor0246
Sacrifice date       25 march 2009

What does aryan and swastika really mean-an analysis

Hi,my name is ravi and i am new to this group and
find it quite interesting.i just want to tell our
friends what is the true history of aryan and swastika
is.people beleive aryan is a race.it is wrong.there is
nothing called "aryan race".there is only aryan
culture.the only surviving aryan culture in the world
today is hinduism.

A very crude kind of anti-Hindu propaganda, sometimes
used by American Protestant sects in warning the youth
against the dangers of american attracted towards
hindu philosphy and hindu practises like yoga, points
out that Hinduism and Nazism have a central symbol in
common : the swastika. I have also heard the
comparison from some people, systematically refer to
Hindus as "Hindu Nazis".

The swastika is quite a sanatana hindu symbol, not
bound up with any nation or ideology. It is also found
among peoples outside the Hindu sphere of influence.

It is because of his fallacious doctrine of the Aryan
race that conquered both Europe and South Asia, and
because of a mistaken belief that the swastika was
typical of the Aryan peoples, that Hitler adopted this
symbol as a symbol of his Aryan state. But of course,
the legitimate Aryans, i.e. the Sanatana
Dharmins(hindus,pagans of europe and arabia) of
whatever ethnicity or race, and of whatever sect
cannot be blamed for Hitler's misconceptions nor for
Hitler's crimes that gave a bad connotation to this
symbol.

This reversal of the swastika's meaning, from a sign
of luck (always depicted on the hand of opulent hindu
god Ganesh) to a sign of evil, is somewhat like the
story of the Christian image of the devil : he is
depicted with buck's horns, a clear reference to the
horned god of Paganism (like the Pashupati on one of
the Indus seals). The positive imagery of Paganism got
integrated into Christian imagery, but then as the
symbol of evil. Now that we are no longer bound by the
compulsions of the missionary project, we may clear
the horned god, as well as the swastika, of the evil
aura with which outsiders have covered them.

For Hindus who have migrated to the West, especially
the U.S., there is a practical problem : if they
display the swastika on the gates of mandirs, or other
places, outsiders think that this is some Nazi outfit.
Worse, people who have personally suffered under the
Nazi regime, may feel painfully reminded. I think it
is a matter of sensitivity to display those swastikas
only in very modest ways, for as long as people who
have lived through the horrors of the Nazi regime are
with us. Meanwhile, the Hindus abroad should educate
the public about the real meaning and hoary tradition
of this symbol, so that some time in the next century
the Swastika may regain its rightful place as a
profound and timeless symbol, untainted by the
accidental and misconceived association with Nazism.

With all this talk about the misuse of the swastika,
it may be useful to briefly restate its basic meaning.
The word comes from su-asti, it be good, as in the
Sanskrit greeting Pratah swasti, good morning. So,
swastika means auspicious-maker or sing of
auspiciousness. What the swastika visually depicts, is
the solar cycle, be it during the day or during the
year. It shows the circular movement at the four
cardinal points : sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight ; or
spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox,
winter solstice. As such, it is a shorthand for the
Zodiac as well as for all macrocosmic and microcosmic
cycles. It signifies the completeness as well as the
dynamics of the Whole. Being primarily a solar symbol,
it is normally (except in black-and-white print)
painted in solar colours like red, saffron or gold ;
while the Nazi swastika was black.

Like the swastika, the term Arya, which is rather
central in Hindu tradition and more so in Nazism, is
in need of rehabilitation. Of course, the term does
not indicate a race, but a quality of character.When
hindus give a short formulation of their teachings,
they calls it the Arya Satyani, the four Noble Truths.

The term Aryan was used by the Nazis in opposition to
the term Semitic. It so happens that both have
a primary linguistic meaning (the Indo-European and
the Semitic language families),
a fallacious racial meaning (with Semitic standing for
Jewish), and a derivative theological meaning, derived from the
language groups in which the main texts of two
religion families have been written
the Hindu tradition in the largest sense, and the
Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition. The Nazis used the
terms in the second meaning, vaguely basing it
scientifically on the first meaning. For the third
meaning, they didn't have the brains not the
philosophical inclination to go into it.

Aryan and Semitic are shorthand for two radically
differing approaches to religion. With "Semitic" are
meant the religions claiming revelation from the one
and only God. In primitive Shamanistic cults, there
may be spirits speaking through the Shaman, but that
is never a unique and definitive revelation from a
unique Creator- god. Similarly, there were oracles
where a god was supposed to speak through a human
medium ; the point is that there were many of them.
But the revealed monotheistic religions carry with
them a typical fundamental doctrine that sets them
apart from all other religions.

On the one hand, their God speaks to people at a
specific moment in history, at a specific place, so
that the beneficiaries or immediate witnesses are
limited in number, certainly less than all of
humanity. On the other hand, their God is the only
one, so that all the other people on earth either have
to get other revelations from this one God, or they
are not getting revelations at all, except false ones
from false gods. While the first option was
theoretically possible, the Semitic religions have
effectively chosen the second. This implies that
humanity gets divided into two : those whom God has
personally addressed, and those whom he has ignored.
So, we get Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Pagans,
Muslims and Kafirs.

Of course, every tribe used to divide the world into
the tribe and the rest. The tribe was home, the rest
was unsafe and foreign. And every group identity,
tribal or other, can give rise to hostility against
other groups. As an application of this general rule,
even religious group identity could be the basis of
polarization and conflict. However, the polarization
between the One God's Chosen Community and the rest of
humanity was of a radically different nature than
these ordinary group antagonisms.

The tribal division was a division between people on
an equal footing. The others had their own identity
and interests, with which our own might sometimes be
incompatible, but there was nothing intrinsically evil
or wrong about them. We had gods, and so had they.
Both of us worshipped the sun god, or the goddess of
fleeting time who devours us all, or the Unknown god,
with local accents and variations, but not radically
different. For instance, in Homer's epic about the
Trojan war, you see some of the gods side with the
Greeks and other gods side with the Trojans. They
shared the divine sphere between them.

This basic equality is broken in the Semitic
religions. There, one part of humanity has God on its
side. That implies that whoever stands against it,
stands against God, with no divine friends on his own
side. There is now a fortunate part of humanity, and
another part which is doomed and cursed. Religion in
its public aspect used to be a unifying thing, a
celebration of a cosmic oneness transcending the
biological social and other differences between the
realms of nature and the members of a society. Now it
became a divisive thing, pitting the Chosen against
the doomed.

In this psychology, it is quite normal that all the
non- human layers of the cosmos, who, just like the
doomed part of humanity, were ignorant of God's unique
revelation, were all deprived of their sacredness. The
golden calf and other idols of the Gentiles were
smashed. The sacred trees of the Pagans were felled.
The holy cows of the Kafirs were slaughtered. And all
this cosmos was given to Adam and Eve for their
pleasure. Henceforth, a tree was nothing but timber

Thus, the Semitic religions constitute a radical break
with natural religiosity, which had always made nature
share in the manifestation of the divine, and which
had never thought of limiting the awareness of the
divine to one community.

In books written in a monotheistic cultural milieu,
this revealed monotheism is always portrayed as a
great step forwards in the march of humanity. However,
in real terms I cannot see one genuine advantage that
has accrued to humanity thanks to the is
revelation-based monotheism. It is said that this
monotheism meant the end of superstition, of people
praying to godlings for favours. But people have
prayed to this new. One God for the same favours.
Worse, is there a bigger superstition than the belief
that you are specially favoured over the other part of
humanity, and that God is on your side ?

By contrast, the Aryan religious traditions like
hinduism has not pretended to be the special recipient
of a unique divine revelation. The divine is manifest
everywhere, be it in different ways and to different
degrees. It is not excluded that some
elements/times/places/animals/people are more sacred
than others, but the difference is only gradual. There
is a divine oneness of all entities in the cosmos. If
at all you want to give this outlook a philosophical
name, you could say that roughly, it is monism. That
means, the assumption or perception that somehow
everything is of one essence.

This Aryan tradition has found its classic formulation
in the Sanskrit hindu writings of entire lineages of
human beings, referred to as Rishis. However, it is
also present in Pagan traditions outside the area
where hindu Sanskrit was the language of culture.
There are outward differences but a fundamental
akinness with Pagan traditions the world over. If you
analyze Pagan practices of ritual, sacrifice,
incantation, you find the same presupposed attitude
towards the cosmos : a basic awareness that it is one.

This basic awareness will be present in the religious
feeling of many a member of the Semitic religions. But
there, it is overlaid with the doctrinal assumption of
a fundamental and irreducible two-ness of the cosmos :
on the one hand God and His chosen ones, on the other
hand the godless remainder. The degree to which
individuals feel bound by their formal allegiance to
this doctrine, may differ widely. And we will not
judge the individuals. But we may give an opinion on
the doctrine of the One God who reveals Himself
to/through a specific individual, has brought an
absolute division of mankind in the minds of its
adherents, and this mental division has in turn caused
untold suffering in persecutions and holy wars.

So, I cannot honestly compare the Aryan and the
Semitic approach, and neutrally say that they are
merely different. There is an inequality between the
two. I think the Aryan approach is fundamentally more
wholesome than the Semitic approach.

Because of this inequality, I think it is important to
choose other terms for these basic doctrinal
categories, than Aryan and Semitic. For, these terms
also denote people. They may not denote races, as
Hitler thought, but they do denote language groups,
and people identify to quite an extent with their
language. Moreover, these two types of religious
outlook do not historically coincide with the said
language groups.

So, I propose to renounce the habit of using Semitic
as shorthand for "revelation-based monotheistic"
religions. The use of the word Arya as shorthand for
Sanatana Dharma can continue, but one should be
careful not to give secularist slanderers a chance of
falsely associating it with the Aryan race nonsense.

But before renouncing the Semitic habit myself, I will
use the term Semitic one last time, in order to show
how Nazism itself, for all its anti-Semitic rhetoric,
very much fitted into the Semitic tradition.

As indian author Girilal Jain has convincingly argued,
Nazism was an extreme realization of the 19th century
secular nationalism in Europe. This secular
nationalism was in its general attitude towards
mankind a direct heir to the Semitic legacy carried
into Europe by Christianity. There is a straight
lineage from Moses' Chosen People to Hitler's
Herrenvolk (superior people). The radical division of
mankind into the chosen insiders and the lost
outsiders is very much present in this secular
nationalism.

A not-so-secular slogan of the impeccably secular Nazi
state, written on the belt of the German soldiers, was
:

Gott mit unsp (God with us). This notion can be traced
straight to Moses, from whom it had made a second
lineage to Mohammed's jihad.

Anti-Semitism (i.e. anti-Judaism) has nothing
whatsoever to do with Germanic Paganism which some
say,very wrongly was favoured by nazis, it is a strong
Christian tradition. Especially the Russian Orthodox
Church and the Roman Catholic Church in Hitler's
Austria gave it implicit or explicit ideological
support. Authoritarian political thought has nothing
whatsoever to do with the Germanic tribal
organization, which was largely democratic, with an
elected king and a regular all-tribe assembly meeting.
It had more to do with the secular organization of the
Roman empire (which model had loomed large over the
European polity all through the Christian period),
which has also influenced the Church organization. The
same Roman influence we find in outward forms like the
uniformist discipline, the Roman salute and the
fondness of grand parades. Secular nationalism,
glorification of the state, genocide, racial purity
and uniformity, all these essential ideological
elements of Nazism have nothing whatsoever to do with
the Pagan religion. Neither the Germanic Paganism, nor
the Hindu Paganism with its swastika.

It is important to stress this profound foreignness of
Nazism to pre-modern Paganism, because once Hindus set
out to rediscover the social philosophy and other
elements of their own traditions, there will of course
be some marxist ignoramus who will say that "this is
just what Hitler did".

The Nazi kind of nationalism was also of the Semitic
kind. Rather than seeing the nation as one step on the
ladder in the organizational hierarchy, below
civilization and humanity, and above regional, tribal
and family units, it denied this gradedness. Instead,
it divided the world in outsiders and insiders, thus
in principle opposing itself to the rest of the world,
and imposed uniformity on the nation, discouraging all
subnational groupings. Again, this exclusivistic and
uniformist nationalism is opposed to the Pagan
outlook.

The dominance of monotheism has strongly promoted that
single most essential trait of the monotheistic mind :
simplistic crudeness. For a well-known example,
monotheists are idol-breakers : they are for God's
unity, therefore they are against diversity. Their
mental culture is too crude to see that multiplicity
does not exclude unity, even while polytheists know
fully well that there is one divine essence in all
their gods (who anyway are all projections of the one
but multi-faceted human consciousness). Most
modernizers these days are appallingly limited to
black-and white categories in their thinking. For
instance, in the present discussion of multi-level
integration, they are of course for slogans like unity
and integration, and therefore they are against any
narrow and chauvinistic championing of region, sect,
language group etc. Their only concept of unity is to
raze everything flat, then there will be no more
difference and disunity, so that will be the
realization of unity, equality etc. This is Hitler's
and Stalin's approach to national integration.

Yet, real modern scientific thinking is gradual. It
handles in-between categories (such as probability
between certainty and uncertainty). This is formally a
rediscovery of the old Pagan world-view. There is not
just the absolute one God and the absolutely profane
plural world, as in monotheism. There is a lot of life
between the two. There is both sacredness and
profaneness within the world, as there is both oneness
and plurality within the divine. Similarly, there are
in-between levels between the individual and the
state, with units who entertain a certain specificity
rather than submitting to uniformity.

In general, a theory of graded integration of distinct
communities via a hierarchy of political levels that
does justice to this distinctness should be evolved.
That is the Aryan answer to a world-wide problem of
plural- identity states, which has been aggravated by
the Semitic absolutist approach.

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