People were offended by a caricature depicting Kali, the Hindu goddess of ultimate power, time, destruction and change
Ukraine’s defense ministry has removed a tweet that featured an image of Hindu goddess Kali following a wave of angry comments from people in India.
On Sunday, the ministry published a drawing by Ukrainian artist Maksym Palenko, accompanied by a short caption reading “Work of art.”
Palenko had reworked an image of an explosion to make it look like the Hindu goddess of ultimate power, time, destruction and change in a pose reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 movie ‘The Seven Year Itch’.
The tweet was seen by almost a million people and caused outrage among Indian users, who said their revered goddess Kali was being “mocked.”
“Our faith is not a matter of joke,” one person commented, calling the tweet “shocking.”
Another individual insisted that “hurting [the] sentiments of 1.4 billion Indians was not okay,” accusing the Ukrainian defense ministry of a “blatant display of Hinduphobia.”
Indian users also tagged Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, urging them to take action.
The Ukrainian defense ministry soon deleted the controversial image, but the incident hadn’t gone unnoticed, making headlines in the Indian media. The Times of India newspaper described the cartoon as “offensive” in its report.
Senior Advisor at Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Kanchan Gupta also commented on the tweet, calling it an example of “brazen hate speech,” and saying no other government had ever done such a thing.
Kiev’s diplomatic advances towards India are all “fakery,” and the cartoon shows the “real face” of the Ukrainian authorities, Gupta wrote on Twitter. “This is an assault on Hindu sentiments around the world,” he added.
India, as a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, has taken a neutral stance since the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022. New Delhi has abstained from UN votes on resolutions condemning Moscow’s military operation, while resisting Western pressure to implement anti-Russia sanctions.
India has also boosted trade cooperation with Moscow, angering Kiev by becoming one of the top buyers of Russian oil. In December, the Ukrainian foreign minister claimed that New Delhi was benefiting from the “suffering” of his compatriots and therefore needed to do more to help Kiev.
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