Restoring the Swastika:
A Win for Hindu Advocacy in Canada
- authored by CoHNA Staff
Who says advocacy does not work? CoHNA Canada is proud to share recent progress in our campaign to distinguish the sacred Swastika from the Nazi symbol—the Hakenkreuz or Hooked Cross. Our advocacy efforts have yielded significant developments in recent months:
Jewish Allyship
It began with a breakthrough with Canada’s oldest Jewish organization. B’nai Brith launched a campaign urging the government in Ottawa to ban Nazi symbols—and specifically used the term ‘Hakenkreuz’ instead of Swastika. The campaign seeks to tackle growing hate while ensuring accuracy and fostering an understanding of context. B’nai Brith’s effort, informed by historical research and interfaith dialogue, explicitly acknowledged that the Swastika is a sacred symbol wrongfully maligned due to visual confusion with Nazi iconography.
As Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith’s Director of Research and Advocacy, explained, “It is a historical injustice that the meaning of the Swastika has been wrongfully maligned by reference to the Nazis.” We could not agree more.
This is a major advance in the campaign to correct the flawed narrative around the Swastika. Established in 1875, B’nai Brith Canada is the country’s oldest Jewish charity and human rights organization. It is also affiliated to B’nai Brith International, the world’s oldest Jewish service organization with branches across the globe that has been combating antisemitism for more than 180 years. B’nai Brith is a pioneer in the Jewish advocacy world, so when they clearly state that the Hakenkreuz and Swastika must be differentiated, the rest of world Jewry takes note.
We saw this play out a few weeks later, on May 13, when the Embassy of Israel in Canada and Ambassador Iddo Moed publicly endorsed B’nai Brith’s campaign, supporting the call to ban public display of the Hakenkreuz and other Nazi iconography. The statement reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to combating antisemitism and hate while respecting sacred symbols of other faith traditions.
From the Hindu perspective, this also paves the way for greater collaboration and allyship between Jews and those of the Dharmic faith. CoHNA Canada joined other organizations representing Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Canadians in endorsing B’nai Brith’s campaign to ban Nazi symbols. The campaign represents a historic moment in Hindu-Jewish allyship and interfaith solidarity.
Rishabh Saraswat, President of CoHNA Canada, called the effort to prohibit public display of Nazi iconography “a historic moment for Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Jains.” He added: “With antisemitism at an all-time high in Canada, and Hinduphobia escalating at an alarming rate, now is the time for Hindus and Jews—natural allies—to unite and push back against this rising tide of hate.”
To learn more about this development, watch this video conversation with B’nai Brith’s Richard Robertson:
Educating Law Enforcement
In parallel, we saw a similarly important breakthrough in Montreal with law enforcement. After sustained advocacy from CoHNA Canada’s Quebec chapter, supported by Dharmic and Jewish community partners, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) updated its hate crime manual. The revision replaces the phrase “drawing a Swastika” with the more accurate “graffitiing Nazi symbols.”
This represents a meaningful step toward ensuring religious communities aren’t falsely associated with hate symbols and that law enforcement uses culturally informed, historically correct terminology. CoHNA had submitted a formal request to SPVM earlier this year urging this correction, citing specific incidents of false complaints and the growing global movement to separate this sacred symbol from Nazi imagery.
This update follows a similar correction in Ontario, which amended its hate crime training materials to reflect the accurate terminology after appeals from CoHNA and other Hindu organizations. These efforts are part of a broader initiative to educate law enforcement and the public about the differences between the sacred Swastika and the Nazi Hakenkreuz.
Why this Distinction Matters
The Swastika is an ancient Sanskrit symbol meaning good fortune and well-being. Sacred to Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, and Indigenous traditions, it represents peace, prosperity, and the cyclical nature of life. It has adorned temples, shrines, homes, and sacred texts for thousands of years.
By contrast, the Hakenkreuz (“hooked cross” in German) was adopted by the Nazi Party in the 1920s and formally institutionalized as the symbol of the Third Reich in 1935. Importantly, Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders never referred to their emblem as the “Swastika”—only as the Hakenkreuz. That historical distinction was well understood at the time but has since been blurred in Western discourse, leading to the wrongful labeling of the sacred Swastika as a hate symbol.
This misrepresentation has had real-world consequences. Hindu families in the Diaspora have been harassed by ill-informed neighbors and law enforcement for displaying religious symbols; Hindu individuals have faced discrimination for bearing the name Swastika or have had to self-censor their use of sacred imagery. All of this has led to wasteful law enforcement responses and reinforced cultural stigma.
Making a clear distinction between the Swastika and the Hakenkreuz, therefore, isn’t just ensuring historical accuracy but, more importantly, it is a step toward religious literacy, social inclusion, and the protection of the right of minorities to practice their faith freely and without fear.