Hindu groups criticize Crozet statue maker

Two Hindu advocacy organizations are denouncing the sale of statues depicting the religion’s deities by a Crozet-based company.

The Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism and the New Jersey-based Forum for Hindu Awakening on Tuesday urged Sacred Source, a longtime distributor of deity statues headquartered in Crozet, to stop selling certain statues depicting Hindu gods.

Rajan Zed, president of the Nevada organization, said Sacred Source is selling statues that depict Hindu deities in ways he deems “inappropriate.”

Zed said in a news release: “These deities were highly revered in Hinduism and inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or con-cepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay.”

Bhavna Shinde, of the Forum for Hindu Awakening, cited the example of one statue offered by Sacred Source that shows Shiva sitting cross-legged with a nude woman in his lap, facing him.

“They are selling statues of our deities … in denigrating positions,” she said. “That’s not acceptable to us Hindus. They are showing our deities in compromising positions.”

Sacred Source was founded 32 years ago and is a leading provider of ancient deity images, offering statues depicting deities from Norse mythology, ancient Egypt, Greek and Roman mythology, Buddhism, Hinduism and more. Artisans handcraft the statues at a factory in West Bengal, India. The company prides itself on paying the craftsmen a fair wage.

The company’s Hindu statues are sold to Hindus in the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy and other countries around the globe.

The statues are primarily based on traditional temple images and are hardly offensive, said Liana Kowalzik, who operates Sacred Source with her husband, Pete.

“All the statues are designed by Hindus, crafted by Hindus, for Hindus,” she said. “[Buyers] want these statues for their reli-gious devotional purposes.”

The company’s mission, Kowalzik said, is to provide sacred symbols of ancient deities to Western culture. None of the com-pany’s offerings could be seen as disrespectful, she said.

“We don’t consider anything we make to be denigrating to Hindus,” she said.

Kowalzik said her company first heard about the Universal Society of Hinduism’s gripes Tuesday morning. She has not heard any other complaints.

“I don’t think it’d be accurate to say we’ve been getting any pressure,” she said. “The only calls we’re getting about this have come from TV and newspaper reporters.”

There is nothing in Hinduism that would forbid the sale of statues depicting the religion’s deities, said Krishna Karimikonda, president of the American Hindu Association.

“They can sell,” he said. “They’re not selling artifacts. They’re not breaking any law. Some of the statues in India are not to be sold, but reproduced statues made of wood or some other material? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

John Nemec, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia who teaches about Hinduism, said the statue depicting Shiva in a sexual pose with a naked woman is a “knockoff of tantric images that are sometimes seen in temples in India and Nepal.”

“The relationship of mainstream Hinduism to Tantric Hinduism is a long and complex one, and the concern over images like this has a lot of historical precedent, since at least the time of the British in India,” he said.

Zed, who did not return a request for comment Tuesday, is a self-described “acclaimed Indo-American and Hindu statesman” who has garnered attention for himself in recent years defending Hinduism against what he views as attacks.

Last month, a Wall Street Journal blog wrote about Zed’s complaints about a California company that produces skateboards, T-shirts and pet clothing depicting Hindu gods.

A few years back, Zed spearheaded a protest campaign against the Mike Myers comedy “The Love Guru,” which Zed feared would lampoon Hinduism.