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HOMEBUSH, AUSTRALIA, March 14, 2005: Dr. A. Balasubramaniam, Chairman of the Hindu Council of Australia, wrote to the Times of India in protest to their article on Lord Siva (see HPI, March 11).



His letter states:



The brief article by Bachi Karkaria in the Times News Network (India) of March 7, 2005, may seem funny to him, but the vast majority of Hindus regard it as sacrilegious. Publishing an article like this at the time of Sivaratri, a holy day when millions meditate on Lord Siva, displays appalling taste and contempt for the Hindu religion. To add insult to injury, Lord Siva is depicted in the illustration as wearing dark glasses and a ridiculous ear-ring. Maybe the author is trying to depict Lord Siva as a “maha-dude,” but to us, Lord Siva is an all-powerful God – one of the Holy Trinity.



This article is littered with profound inanities – that Siva breaks the rules (what rules?), that He shifts the goal-posts (what goal-posts?), that He is an iconoclast (what icons or beliefs did he destroy?). The delay in achieving economic success and Aids control had nothing to do with the people of India pretending to be spiritual and other-worldly. Any failures in these two areas were due entirely to the incompetence and bureaucratic rigidity fostered by successive central and state governments in India. It does not reflect very well on the Times of India and its writers to sneer at a great, ancient religion and the abounding faith of millions of people who believe in it.



Two final questions – would the Times of India have published a drawing of the founder of Islam wearing dark glasses and a funny earring? Would the writer have written a similar tongue-in-cheek article about the founder of Islam? No doubt a fatwa would have been the immediate result. On behalf of the International Hindu Community we demand an apology with a copy to us. We also request that your publication, refrains from doing so in future, not just to Hinduism, but to other faiths as well. We can understand when the media in the West tries to poke fun at the Hindu Gods and Goddesses, but it hurts deeply when a reputable Indian newspaper of long standing is doing it.

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