Protest : Misrepresentation of Lord Ganesh in a children’s storybook – “Elephant prince – The story of Ganesh”

From: Hindu Awakening <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 7:14 PM
Subject: Misrepresentations in “Elephant Prince: The Story of Ganesh”
To: [email protected], [email protected]

To whom it may concern,

We at Forum for Hindu Awakening have received some complaints from Hindus about your book called “Elephant Prince: The Story of Ganesh”. Forum for Hindu Awakening is a nonprofit organization that strives to awaken society to the unique spiritual science behind Hindu Dharma concepts and practices, to motivate people to live and preserve them, and to facilitate the spiritual progress of humanity. One of the ways we do this is by addressing misrepresentations of Hinduism. We are sending this letter to you to inform you of the factual errors in the book that represent Hinduism poorly that were brought to our attention by concerned Hindus. We do commend you for your effort to spread awareness of Hinduism through this book, but the factual errors mentioned below need to be addressed in order for the book to represent Hinduism accurately.

1. Lord Ganesh has been referred to as a prince. Lord Ganesh is a Deity, not a prince. As per Hinduism, Deities are eternal principles of God that carry out different functions in the universe. As princes are a human concept, depicting Lord Ganesh as a prince is inaccurate since Hindus consider Lord Ganesh to be beyond human boundaries and limitations.

2. The book states that the story is set “in the Himalayas in a time of gods and goddesses”. As stated above, Hindus consider their Deities to be eternal, so it hurts Hindu sentiments to relegate Deities to the past.

3. On the cover page, there is a picture of Lord Ganesh with His right ear pierced. On the first page of the book, His left ear is pierced. Lord Ganesh should not have His ears pierced.

4. It is mentioned in the book that Lord Shiva asked Goddess Parvati to marry Him. In the Shiv Puran, it is said that Goddess Parvati Herself asked Lord Shiva to marry Her.

5. It is stated in the book that “Parvati offered the sacred river a gift of 100 glowing candles.” Candles are not considered spiritually pure in Hinduism and it would instead be correct to say Goddess Parvati offered 100 ghee or oil lamps.

We urge you to consider the above points and make corrections as requested. We stress that our aim in bringing up these points is to educate and ensure that Hinduism gets accurately represented in society. Hinduism has been misrepresented at many levels from the level of school textbooks to popular media. Though it is an ancient tradition, Hinduism has a lot to offer the modern world and we want children and adults alike to be able to understand and study it without it being misrepresented. You can take one step towards ensuring that Hinduism gets represented properly by making changes to the book as mentioned above.

Sincerely,
Forum for Hindu Awakening

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FHA’s Letter to ISKCON pasted below

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Hare Krishna,

We at Forum for Hindu Awakening want to bring to your attention a book written by ISKCON followers (Amy Novesky and Belgin K. Wedman)  by the name  “Elephant Prince: The Story of Ganesh”  which is misrepresenting Lord Ganesh.

Forum for Hindu Awakening is a registered NGO in USA, doing social, Hindu Dharma related and national welfare work. The Forum is also active throughout the world, educating people about Hindu Dharma in a scientific way, campaigning against malpractices done as Hindu Dharma related practices and solving problems related to misrepresentation of Hindu Dharma. For further details please refer to our website http://www.forumforhinduawakening.org/.

This book has a few factual errors as mentioned below which hurt the religious sentiments of millions of Hindus –

1. Lord Ganesh has been referred to as a prince. Lord Ganesh is a Deity, not a prince. As per Hinduism, Deities are eternal principles of God that carry out different functions in the universe. As princes are a human concept, depicting Lord Ganesh as a prince is not in accordance with the Scriptural description of Lord Ganesh. In Hinduism, Deities are beyond human boundaries and limitations.

2. The book states that the story is set “in the Himalayas in a time of Gods and Goddesses”. As stated above, Deities are eternal, so relegating Deities to the past hurts sentiments  of Hindus.

3. On the cover page, there is a picture of Lord Ganesh with His right ear pierced. On the first page of the book, His left ear is pierced. This type of depiction of Lord Ganesh is incorrect and not in accordance with His Scriptural description.  It leads to denigration of Lord Ganesh.

4. It is mentioned in the book that Lord Shiva asked Goddess Parvati to marry Him. This representation is incorrect and deeply hurts religious sentiments of millions of devotees of Lord Shiva. It is also disrespectful and denigrating to Lord Shiva. In the Shiv Puran, it is said that Goddess Parvati Herself asked Lord Shiva to marry Her.

5. It is stated in the book that “Parvati offered the sacred river a gift of 100 glowing candles.” Candles are recent invention and did not exist in the previous eras. Candles are not considered spiritually pure in Hinduism and it would instead be correct to say Goddess Parvati offered 100 ghee or oil lamps.

The above is clearly misrepresentation and denigration of Hindu Deities. This book will be read by many children and they would learn incorrect aspects about Hinduism and Deities, Lord Ganesh, Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati.

We wrote a letter to the authors of this book, but there has been no response. We are now reaching out to you as this book is dedicated to Srila Prabhupadaji and wanted to see if you can take any action about this misrepresentation of Lord Ganesh.

Sincerely,
Forum for Hindu Awakening