Leave the Gods alone

For all those religious enough, it must be annoying to see how Gods & Goddesses are being used & made fun of these days.

If it was M F Hussein painting hindu deities in the nude. Then the recent issue of cartoons has taken things to unbelievable heights. To add fuel to fire, the Times of India carries a news piece today that the picture of Goddess Durga in ads for a whisky bottle.

I suppose there comes a time in the life of a person, brand or company when all else has been used to the maximum extent & the only option left for them is the creator. And unlike Khushboo who atleast got a chance to react to a morphed picture in the first Indian issue of Maxim, Gods & Goddesses can’t have their say in this regard and therefore the only people who will rise in their defense are their so called followers. Thus starts what is called ‘communal tension’.

I remember the brief I got when I was assigned the task of shortlisting cartoons for our company calendar. My boss told me the cartoons you select should not offend anybody, should not be sexist, shouldn’t be biased in favor of someone & so on & so forth. If all this is for a company calendar then I can’t comprehend why someone like M F Hussein would paint Hindu deities in the nude. Is that creativity? Art? Same questions can also be thrown at the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons. Didn’t they know that they are venturing into an area that is risky? Didn’t the other newspapers that reused those cartoons know that this could be an issue? Doesn’t the liquor company who has used Goddess Durga in its ads, know the consequences?

I’am sure they knew the consequences completely. May be that is why they did what they did in the first place. There was this term social responsibility being thrown around during the cartoons issue. Today, The Times of India clearly states that they didn’t deliberately publish the picture of the liquor bottle so as to not hurt the sentiments of a certain community, that is a right thing to do. They could have easily put the picture in the paper & created a controversy.

I also feel we make only selective noises when it comes to issues like this. If I wish to stand up & oppose I will do it. Haven’t the Hindu Gods been made fun of in our movies? Why doesn’t anybody rise in protest then? In some Tamil movie (which was shown over the last weekend) a Goddess is begging in the modern day world’s traffic signal, complete with a begging bowl & so on. Isn’t that scene worthy of protests? Seen those pictures of Gods (or religious signs like Om/Cross) of various religions to prevent people from urinating or dropping off garbage in a particular place? Is this OK? Is this what we have reduced our Gods to? Doesn’t this require a protest?

The fact of the matter is anything-religious fuels passion. That is the simple fact that all of us will have to understand. No wonder the British played the policy of dividing the Hindus & Muslims & ruling India & no wonder, the BJP played the Ram Mandir issue & came to power. May be that is what a MF Hussein or the Danish newspapers want. Attention & success, because that is what they get easily & freely.

It may be easy said than done, but we need to leave the Gods & Goddesses alone. Involving them or anything to do with them to either start or douse a human problem will only lead to their reaction when we go up to the heaven or hell.