A brewery on Sydney’s northern beaches is facing renewed criticism from some Hindus that the company reneged on an agreement to remove an insensitive label from its ginger beer.
Brookvale Union, which shares staff with the 4 Pines Brewing Company in Manly, faced calls in late 2013 to redesign the ginger beer packaging and remove an Indian-themed design that appeared to show a figure with the head of Hindu god Ganesh and the body of the goddess Lakshmi.
We’re certainly not in the business of offending people.
At the time, the brewery apologised and announced the label would be redesigned. Alterations were made to the design, which still has an Indian style and depicts an elephant’s head on the body of a woman.
Yadu Singh, a Sydney-based cardiologist and the president of the Indian Australian Association of NSW, believes the changes didn’t go far enough and he is calling on businesses to remove the product from their shelves.
“They have gone back on their word which they gave to us and many others, and they still have those pictures, even though they have made minor changes,” Dr Singh said.
“Having a picture of a very prominent, respected and highly regarded deity of Hinduism [on] a beer bottle … this is offensive. “I have been in Australia since 1991; I haven’t seen any beer bottles with Jesus Christ on [them].”
4 Pines Brewing Company co-founder Jaron Mitchell said the labels were redesigned on the advice of Dr Singh and other Australian Hindus who identified aspects of the design that needed to be changed.
Mr Mitchell said the elephant head depicted on the label was redesigned to remove any resemblance to the god Ganesh.
“It’s just like an animal, it’s not a godlike kind of a face,” Mr Mitchell told Fairfax Media.
The revised figure has only two arms, and the image of a cow, which is a sacred animal in the Hindu faith, was replaced with a bowl of fruit.
“We’re certainly not in the business of offending people,” Mr Mitchell said.
“It’s certainly not a unified Hindu opinion [that the image is offensive]. I know that because I’ve had Hindus say, ‘look, don’t listen to these guys’.”
Rajan Zed, a Hindu leader in the US state of Nevada, has been raising international awareness of the labelling controversy.
“We Hindus being such a large group, about 1 billion, there is the possibility of some disagreements,” Mr Zed said. But he added that most Hindus would be offended by the image of a deity being used to sell liquor.
Brookvale Union has urged anyone offended by the label to contact it directly.