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Hindu U.S. Statesman Objects to Depiction of Deities in Manga

It would be one thing if the criticism was aimed at depictions of real life entities, historical or present, but when all the objects depicted are fictional themselves, it's fictional all the way down. Hope someone with an archetype for a world turtle won't feel slighted by that line...

I don't quite gather what you're getting at. Are you suggesting the gods being represented are fictional too? The objection implies these gods are just as real as gods from any other faith.

Past wrote:

I don't quite gather what you're getting at. Are you suggesting the gods being represented are fictional too? The objection implies these gods are just as real as gods from any other faith.

What I'm getting at people have had differing notions of their objects of worship, as a concept as well as an image, through ages no matter the religion in question(in Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, etc, in Islam, Sunni, Shia etc...) so there's never been any accurate depictions to rely on to begin with...

...this is similar to greek gods like zeus,hades and posiedon being used but the difference here is unlike just being treated as mythical gods the Hindu gods are regularly worshiped and revered, there are numerous holidays and festivals in their name so even if you're not a hindu and live in India you'd know how big a deal they are.

What I'm getting at people have had differing notions of their objects of worship, as a concept as well as an image, through ages no matter the religion in question(in Christianity, Catholicism, Protestantism, etc, in Islam, Sunni, Shia etc...) so there's never been any accurate depictions to rely on to begin with...

So you think the guy is criticizing how they are physically and visually depicted? I doubt that. I can't speak for the manga in the thumbnail since I didn't read it but the article also mentions that he criticized Apocalypse in X-men movie since he said he was Krishna which is a highly revered god in Hinduism and many religious communities in India criticized that for making their god a villain. And as the article says he's talking about how Shiva is "trivialized". Shiva,Vishnu and Brahma are often used like final bosses or someone that needs to be fought against in many anime, manga and games, this is similar to greek gods like zeus,hades and posiedon being used but the difference here is unlike just being treated as mythical gods the Hindu gods are regularly worshiped and revered, there are numerous holidays and festivals in their name so even if you're not a hindu and live in India you'd know how big a deal they are. Think of it like jesus being a final villain. Offcourse, it's not like Jesus is not used in fiction, there are quite a few banned material about it, just take 'The Last Temtation of Christ' for example.

But isn't it better to at least have recognition instead of social obscurity? Like take my particular Christian denomination, the phenomenon of The Book of Mormon musical has done incredible, incredible things for the social acceptance of missionary work of Latter-day Saints and the LDS faith in general. And instead of the LDS church leaders getting all outraged because of the minor vulgarities contained therein or how it doesn't paint a perfectly rosy picture of many aspects of LDS lifestyle, they instead embraced it and tried to make the best of the newly found interest in the faith.

So my support for people offended by trivial use of and profiteering from likenesses of Hindu deities stems from this analogy you made about the value of recognition.