Withdraw T-shirts carrying Lord Ganesh image: US Hindus ask California-based Third Eye Threads

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement, said that Lord Ganesh is greatly revered in Hinduism and meant to be worshipped in temples and home shrines.

he said it was hugely painful for devotees to see him misrepresented and paraded around on T-shirts as the "devil".

"There was simply no connection/commonality between Lord Ganesh (worshipped as the god of wisdom and remover of obstacles, and invoked before the beginning of any major undertaking) and the devil (variously described as an evil spirit, personification/manifestation/essence of evil, wicked, malevolent, etc.)," said Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism.

Rajan Zed also urged `Third Eye Threads' and its CEO to offer a formal apology, besides withdrawing "Ganesh" tanks and raglans from their website and resellers' websites/stores.

"Apparel companies should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege, and ridiculing entire communities; and using inappropriately reimagined versions of sacred Hindu deities or concepts or symbols or icons for commercial or other agenda," Zed pointed out.

Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about 1.2 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.

Zed noted that such trivialization of deities was disturbing to the Hindus world over. "Hindus are for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith is something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers," Zed added.