SURENDRA ULLAL
CHICAGO: Santa Cruz Socks Co., a California-based MERGE4 company, has apologized and taken down socks carrying the image of Hindu deity Lord Ganesh following strong protests by Indian-Americans across the country.
The Indian community deemed marketing of these socks disgusting and highly inappropriate.
MERGE4 founder-CEO Cindi Busenhart, in an email to Rajan Zed who spearheaded the protest, wrote: “We offer our sincere apologies to the Hindu community. We have removed the Ganesh socks from our website and plan to discontinue the design… it was not our intention to trivialize the Hindu faith in any way”.
Rajan is the president of Universal Society of Hinduism and he took the apology in the right spirit thanking MERGE4 and Busenhart for understanding the concerns of the Hindu community Lord Ganesh is highly revered in Hinduism and is meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be adorned or wrapped around one’s feet/legs. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts or symbols for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees, Rajan said.
Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about 1.1 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 noted.
The two objectionable Ganesh socks, which now seems to have been removed, were priced at $20 and $11.
