Upset Hindus are urging Palmi (Reggio Calabria, Italy) based Baffo Craft Brewery to apologize and withdraw its Ganesh Craft Beer; calling it highly inappropriate.
Baffo’s Ganesh Craft Beer bottle carries an image of Hindu deity Lord Ganesh holding beer mug in one hand and a bottle in another.
Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts or symbols for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.
Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, indicated that Lord Ganesh and was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be used in selling beer for mercantile greed. Moreover, linking a Hindu deity with an alcoholic beverage was very disrespectful, Zed added.
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 noted.
In Hinduism, Lord Ganesh is worshipped as god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking.
Ganesh is decribed in the translated version of Baffo website as moderately strong with a soft body double malt amber-colored craft beer in English IPA style, which is fabulous with meat and excellent with cold cuts (Alcohol 5.8%, IBU 56, EBC 21). Vincenzo Barilà is depicted as the owner and brew master of Baffo Craft Brewery.
Palmi, described as an important cultural-agricultural-commercial center in the province of Reggio Calabria in Italy, overlooking the Violet coast, is an important seaside resort, which is affectionately called “terrace on the Strait of Messina”.
Source: World Hindu News (WHN)