Hindu protests intensify against The Love Guru

PROTEST AGAINST LOVE GURU: Protestors say the film hurts the sentiments of the Hindu community.

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Keywords: Protest, Hindus

New York: The protests against the new Mike Myers' film, The Love Guru, started with the Nevada-based activist Rajan Zed, who gave the first-ever Hindu invocation at the US Senate last summer. The protest rapidly spread across the web.

The protestors believe the film lampoons Hinduism and other than launching a petition drive to boycott the film, they have asked the Motion Picture Association of America to suspend the studio behind it, Paramount, for "unethical and unprofessional business practices".

Protestors say the film hurts the sentiments of the Hindu community.

One of the protestors, Arish Sahani says, "The word guru is next to the God and then the word is being projected as comedy. It is very unethical on the part of Paramount."

But Myers who plays The Love Guru or Guru Pitka in the film says it's about humour not Hinduism.

"This is a mythical, non-denominational belief system, just like the Force is in Star Wars. My delivery system is silly comedy. I love silly," says Mike Myers.

Indian-American actor Manu Narayan who plays the Love Guru's assistant also dismisses the attacks.

"Hinduism is not going to suffer from anything, I think. And this movie has nothing to do with religion. It's a comedy and it's a funny movie and people should see it before they make any opinion and have whatever opinion you want," says he.

More than anything else, The Love Guru is a take off on the culture of Godmen in the United States.

The Love Guru is getting little love from a section of Hindu activists in America. But after some of its members watched it, the Hindu American Foundation described the film as "vulgar" but not "Hinduphobic".