The Marg Darshak Mandal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has submitted a petition to the Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan against Assembly Speaker AN Shamseer for his recent remarks on Lord Ganesha. The petition alleges that not just did his comments insult ‘Hindu sentiments’ but that he had also committed a breach of the oath he took as a Member of the Assembly and asks the Governor to seek a report from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and also bring the matter to the attention of the President of India.
Addressing school students at Ernakulam recently, Shamseer had remarked that the Union government should not promote mythology but encourage scientific temper. In that context he also referred to plastic surgery claims over the origins of Lord Ganesha - the story goes that Lord Shiva had mistakenly beheaded his own son Ganesha in rage, but later resurrected him, by grafting on the dead body the head of an elephant.
The plastic surgery business hit international headlines back in 2014 itself, when no less a person than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself had said a couple of times, “We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”
The VHP petition says that nobody has the right to cast aspersions on the contents of the holy books of religions and alleges that by doing so, the Speaker, who belongs to another religion, has caused ‘irreparable injury to the democratic fabric of India’.
A delegation met the Governor at the Raj Bhavan last week, and VHP has said that the Governor assured them that he will seek a report from the CM. For its part, the BJP has filed a complaint with the Thiruvananthapuram Police Commissioner asking for a police complaint to be registered against Shamseer.
It has also accused the CPI(M) led LDF in Kerala of being anti-Hindu, while the BJP’s National Information and Technology Department head Amit Malviya has cited the instance to attack both the Left and the Congress.
But Shamseer has maintained that he had no intentions of hurting religious sentiments and called the BJP’s allegations as a ‘false campaign’.