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Sangh doctors drop Red Cross for
Swastika
WSN Bureau
AHMEDABAD:
Gujarat doctors leaning towards the Sangh parivar are promoting the
use of the swastika instead of the Red Cross. Several, like Dr
Bharat Amin, have already switched over to the Swastika. His clinic
in Paldi sports the symbol, long used in major world religions such
as Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Once in common
use around the world without stigma, the Swastika became
controversial after the Nazis adopted it as their symbol. Amin said
those who associated the Swastika with the Nazis were ignorant. “The
Swastika was well known for centuries before the Nazis adopted it.
This is very much our cultural symbol, described in our scrip-tures,”
he said. The Swastika being used by the doctors is different from
the Nazi Iron Cross, he said. The doctors are using the Hindu
variation with four dots in the four segments.
Amin says that
within a month, over 1,000 doctors in Gujarat who are affiliated to
Arogya Bharti are likely to switch over to the Swastika from the Red
Cross. Arogya Bharti, an organisation of medical practitioners that
is attached to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, will request other
doctors to use the Swastika, too. “It is our cultural symbol; no one
should have any problems with it,” Amin said. Doctors affiliated to
the Arogya Bharti have begun printing fresh visiting cards, letter
pads, and clinic and hospital banners that sport the Swastika, said
Pravin Bhavsar, treasurer of the organisation.The Indian Medical
Association has sought an explanation from its Ahmedabad arm on the
use of the Swastika. Amin and Bhavsar find this strange.
30
April 2008
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