It ain’t easy to be a guru

A few days ago I posted about the one-man campaign by Nevada Hindu leader Rajan Zed to derail the upcoming Mike Myer’s film “The Love Guru.” Now a more, shall we say, respected Hindu leader, Deepak Chopra, says the controversy is much ado about nothing and the film is fine with him. From the AP, […]

A few days ago I posted about the one-man campaign by Nevada Hindu leader Rajan Zed to derail the upcoming Mike Myer’s film “The Love Guru.” Now a more, shall we say, respected Hindu leader, Deepak Chopra, says the controversy is much ado about nothing and the film is fine with him.

From the AP, via Time magazine: “The premature outcry against the movie is itself religious propaganda,” Chopra writes, noting that the protesters based their views on the film’s 2 1/2-minute trailer. “As viewers will find out when the movie is released this summer, no one is more thoroughly skewered in it than I am – you could even say that I am made to seem preposterous.”

And wouldn’t you know that as I sit here typing, who calls but Rajan Zed. His response email:


“Through these protests, we are attempting to safeguard the rights and respect of all minorities including Hindus and including ‘mind-body’ guy Deepak Chopra who makes a living by repackaging Hindu concepts, terminology, and products and who is unsuccessfully trying to defend this apparent mockery and in the process creating more confusion,” Rajan Zed said.

Everyone is a minority in some place and in some sense in this world and deserves to be respected, Zed stressed.

Now that that’s settled …

But there’s more. Now some Sikhs are raising complaints about a regular feature in Golf Digest magazine, the Golf Guru. The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) say they expect to receive an apology from Golf Digest in its August issue.

From something called the Sikh News Network (who doesn’t have a news network these days?):

Golf Digest is expected to send a letter of apology for its use of an image of Guru Arjan that it pulled from the Internet, manipulated and printed as the “golfing guru” in its May issue, an advocacy group spokesman said today.

Jerry Tarde, the editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine, told the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Washington that an apology would also be printed in the August issue that will be released in mid July.


“We never believed there was any malice involved (by Golf Digest),” said Rajbir Singh Datta, national director of SALDEF. “This was an opportunity for education – for the administration as well as the readers, which is an affluent crowd.”

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