Hindus are urging CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, to ensure that Lord Shiva statue installed in its complex near Geneva (Switzerland) is treated with reverence it deserved.
A video showing a strange ritual (which The Guardian termed as “mock ritual human sacrifice”) apparently in front of its Shiva-Nataraja statue appeared few months back, which CERN called a “spoof”, adding: “Persons that are authorised to access the CERN site sometimes let their sense of humour go too far, and that is what has happened on this occasion.”
Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that Lord Shiva was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be trivialized in spoofs. Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for other agendas was not okay as it hurt the faithful.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged CERN Council President Professor Sijbrand de Jong and Director-General Dr. Fabiola Gianotti to conclude the thorough investigation into this breach of “CERN’s professional guidelines” and then publish the results on its website. They should also ensure that such strange activities did not happen around Lord Shiva in the future.
Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not be taken frivolously. Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled, Rajan Zed indicated.
Zed further said that Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the followers.
Founded in 1954; CERN; whose tagline is “accelerating science”; where “physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe”; claims to be “one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research”. “Seeking and finding answers to questions about the Universe”, CERN also claims to have invented The World Wide Web.
In Hinduism, Lord Shiva, along with Lord Brahma and Lord Vishnu, forms the great triad of Hindu deities. Moksh (liberation) is the ultimate goal of Hinduism.