Success : Amazon stops selling Ganesha skateboards, but other products still there

After days of protest by Hindus, Amazon has taken down Ganesha skateboard. But the fight is not yet over as Amazon is still selling various products like bed covers and duvet covers showing images of highly revered Hindu deity Shri Ganesh. Can you imagine – someone is going to keep his/her foot on the picture of Shri Ganesh ? Let us unite to protest against Amazon and compel them to remove all such products and also render unconditional apology for hurting religious sentiments of Hindus !

Detailed news

Hindus are disappointed with world’s largest online retailer Amazon.com for continuing to carry skateboards, bed covers, duvet covers and bedspreads; showing images of Hindu deity Ganesha; which they called highly inappropriate and urged their withdrawal sometime back.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who spearheaded the protest, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Ganesha was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshipped 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.

Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not be taken frivolously. Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled, Rajan Zed indicated.

Zed further said that such trivialization of 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, Ganesha is worshipped 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.

Amazon.com, Inc., a Fortune 500 company founded in 1994, and headquartered in Seattle (USA), claims to offer earth’s biggest selection.

Source : From Our Correspondent