Hindu religious men from the Swaminarayan Gadi Sansthan Maninagar, give final touches to a huge piece of folk art, a Rangoli, ahead of Diwali in Ahmedabad on October 24, 2011. This traditional Rangoli is shaped like a swastika which Hinuds believe is a symbol of progress. - AFP File Photo

NEW YORK: A New York store was told by a city politician Wednesday to stop selling swastika earrings, although the shop manager said they were an ancient Indian symbol, not the Nazi emblem.

Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president in New York, said on his website that swastikas could not be a “fashion statement. It is the most hateful symbol in our culture and an insult to any civilized person.”

However, the manager of Bejeweled, a store in Brooklyn, told Fox News that the $5.99 earrings were sold as a symbol of ancient eastern religious beliefs.

The swastika had been used in India and elsewhere for many centuries before the Nazis stripped it of religious significance and made it their defining emblem before World War II.

“It's not a Nazi symbol,” Young Kim told Fox News. “I don't know what's the problem. My earrings are coming from India as a Buddhist symbol.”

Stringer said the response showed “unbelievably poor judgment and shocking to the sensibilities of all New Yorkers. I demand the store recall these earrings immediately.”