Sangh dividing medical community by pushing swastika instead of red cross

The Telegraph
4 April 2008

Sangh doctors drop Red Cross for Swastika
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Amin’s clinic with the Swastika. Telegraph picture

Ahmedabad, April 3: 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 scriptures,” 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.

They said that the souvenir for the IMA convention in Nagpur last year had carried an article, Red Cross versus Swastika, which was reproduced in the bulletin of the Ahmedabad Medical Association last February. “Why should the IMA object to it now?” Bhavsar said.

He said the idea took shape after widespread “misuse” of the Red Cross.

The symbol can only be used by members of the Red Cross Society or the armed forces medical service. “Ever since we learnt that there were objections to the misuse of the Red Cross symbol, known the world over as the sign of medical help, we have been thinking of an alternative,” he said.

“In November, when we met in Bhopal during our national convention, we started the campaign for the Swastika. Doctors and medical practitioners affiliated to the Arogya Bharti then decided to promote the Swastika and issued an appeal to their colleagues asking them to switch over,” Bhavsar said.

M.C. Patel, president of the Ahmedabad Medical Association, feels there is nothing wrong in using the Swastika. Although he claims he is not affiliated to the Arogya Bharti, he argued the Swastika was an auspicious sign.