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Comment by nelblu | Hacker News Reader

The Hindu swastika is generally red in colour, has serif like font and tilted by 45° (compared to the generally accepted Nazi swastika). I'm sure someone can use it maliciously but as someone who grew up looking at Hindu swastika pretty much everywhere, and much later in my life saw the Nazi swastika, at first glance, I didn't really think they were identical.

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Hindu swastika isn’t tilted 45 degrees. You probably proved that even someone who has seen them and understands differences, can still get it wrong.

Some people can't tell the difference:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-summer-camp-...

> A California summer camp tucked away in a woodsy pocket of the Silicon Valley abruptly canceled all summer sessions after several staff members quit over a controversy around a swastika symbol on one of the buildings.

> The camp administration explained in its letter that the house had three tiles, each about 12-by-12 inches, with Buddhist swastikas and a lotus embedded in them. When the home was constructed, the symbol would have been considered good luck.

I'm sure some can't. I didn't mean to say that, I was just telling how I perceived it. In fact, I warn my Hindu friends against using the Hindu swastika on their cars or on their houses here in the West, just so that they don't confuse people here.

I'm very sympathetic to both groups here.

1. It's an old symbol. Buddhists had it first, and I don't blame them for wanting to hang onto it.

2. Regardless of context, I don't want a picture of me on the Internet playing and having fun in front of a swastika. By the time you get to the part of the explanation that would show you're not actually a neo-Nazi, people will have stopped listening (if they ever did in the first place).

I don't think there are any unreasonable people in that story. It's just an awful situation.

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