Upset Hindus Want Amazon To Apologize, Withdraw Lord Ganesha Skateboards

An upset US-based Hindu group is urging world’s largest online retailer Amazon.com for the immediate withdrawal of skateboards, bed covers, duvet covers and bedspreads; carrying the images Hindu deity Lord Ganesha; calling it highly inappropriate.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Lord Ganesha was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines and not to put your feet on or touch with your feet or sleep on it. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the faithful.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged Amazon.com and its President Jeffrey P. Bezos to offer a formal apology, besides withdrawing about few dozen of such products, as this was not the first time for the company to offer such products which were deemed offensive by Hindu devotees.

Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled, Rajan Zed indicated.

Zed further said that such trivialization of Lord Ganesha was disturbing to the Hindus world over. Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers, Zed added.

In Hinduism, Lord Ganesha is worshiped as god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking. There are about three million Hindus in USA.