Self-Appointed Hindu Spokesman Demands Censorship in Massachusetts

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Tahlib

“Ganapati the Warrior” a nontraditional painting of the Hindu diety Ganesha

He's at it again! Since 2008, I've been reading over and over about Rajan Zed's outrage at Artists and Art Museums across the USA. Zed is President of Universal Society of Hinduism based in Nevada, an anti-defamation league of sorts. I honor Zed's religious tradition, but not his artist censorship campaigns. It seems that each month, he makes a new artistic-censorship pronouncement that "Hindus are offended," but the only Hindu speaking is extremist Rajan Zed. This week he's angry about a painting of the Hindu deity Ganesha at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that “Ganapati the Warrior” painting in “Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence” exhibition was quite disrespectful as Hindu devotees world over were not used to this kind of depiction of Lord Ganesha, a highly revered deity worshipped by Hindus. [link]

I am baffled by those who exert all their energies in anger and outrage, rather than celebrating the diversity of ways of seeing and knowing the divine. India's leading artists, including the most influential, M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta, and Nasreen Mohamedi -- have all faced challenges from people like Zed who don't value individualized representations of faith, but I say that's their problem. The exhibition, "Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence" will be on view at the PEM though April 21, 2013.