Hindu groups seek apology from Harris’ niece for offensive tweet

HINDU groups in the US have sought an apology from the niece of Senator Kamala Harris for tweeting an ‘offensive’ image, which depicted the Democratic vice presidential nominee as goddess Durga.

The tweet has since been deleted by Meena Harris, 35, who is a lawyer, a children’s book author and the founder of the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign, an organisation that works to bring awareness to intersectional social causes.

‘Your tweeting a caricature of the feminine divine, Maa Durga, with faces superimposed, deeply aggrieved many Hindus globally,’ Suhag A Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation said in a tweet on Monday.

HAF, which represents the Hindu American community, has issued a guideline for commercial use of images relating to the religion.

Rishi Bhutada of the Hindu American Political Action Committee said the ‘offensive’ picture was not created by Meena Harris herself. It had been circulating on WhatsApp prior to her tweet and the Biden campaign confirmed to him that the image was not created by it.

‘Given that, I personally believe that an apology should come from Meena Harris even though she did delete the tweet, and no one else. Our religious iconography should not be used in the service of politics in America -- I said the same when the Fort Bend County GOP did it in an ad in 2018, and it holds the same here,’ Bhutada said.

Ajay Shah, convener of American Hindus Against Defamation, said in a statement the image has offended and outraged the religious community.

In the now deleted tweet, a screenshot of which is being retweeted by some people, Meena Harris says: ‘I am actually speechless, other than to say that the first day of Navaratri was LIT.’