{"id":15876,"date":"2018-01-28T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2018\/01\/28\/the-good-swastika\/"},"modified":"2018-01-28T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T12:00:00","slug":"the-good-swastika","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2018\/01\/28\/the-good-swastika\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Swastika"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2018\/01\/26\/the-good-swastika\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>UNITED STATES, January 26, 2018 (RNS by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman): I just returned from my first trip to India and Nepal, a soul-stretching pilgrimage that was as much mentally as physically demanding. Along the way, I made my peace with the swastika. Not that swastika, that unrepentant symbol of hate seen most recently on the streets of Charlottesville. No, I&#8217;m talking about the original swastika, the ancient Asian swastika, the one you get when you peel away that nasty layer of red and black paint. I saw how, in India, this symbol brings a sense of warmth and protection to tiny village huts, similar to the role played by the mezuzah in Jewish homes. I also saw how it conveys a feeling of grace and order in public art, grand squares and vast temples. In Sanskrit, the word connotes well-being; the four arms symbolize sun, wind, water and soil, the basic elements of existence.<\/p>\n<p>Making peace with the swastika does not mean making peace with Nazis past and present, nor with their hateful ideology &#8212; nor with their corrupted version of that symbol. Rather, it is a statement of defiance to those who so grotesquely distorted an emblem held sacred by half the world. <\/p>\n<p>More of this account at &#8220;source&#8221; above.<\/p>\n<p>Muruga Song Released for Thai Pusam<br \/>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=isrCboz8AvY&#038;feature=youtu.be<\/p>\n<p>SINGAPORE, January 25, 2018: For those wanting to get in the mood for the Thai Pusam festival in a few days, we recommend this YouTube video by our friends Aks and Lakshmi of Eclipse Nirvana and Padmini Chandrashekar singing this upbeat arrangement of the traditional song, &#8220;Velava Velava Vel Muruga Vaa Vaa.&#8221; Filmed at the Sri Murugan Hill Temple of Singapore.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source UNITED STATES, January 26, 2018 (RNS by Rabbi Joshua Hammerman): I just returned from my first trip to India,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}