The owner of a New York City store selling religious figurines made of chocolates is puzzled over the recent ire from a Hindu group over a gold-dusted Ganesh. The Universal Society of Hinduism has asked Bond Street Chocolate in East Village to withdraw its Ganesh, as the chocolate statues are an insult to Hindus, president Rajan Zed said. Zed, the society’s only full-time staff member is a frequent critic of the nonreligious use of Hindu imagery, The New York Times reported.
But store owner Lynda Stern, whose 3-inch-tall Ganesh sells for $15, has no intention of desisting. “All spiritual icons are treated equally in my shop with honor and respect to the religion,” she told The New York Times. Stern has been making and selling the figurines for the past five years with barely a whiff of controversy. She also sells a chocolate Jesus, Moses and Buddha, as part of the store’s “divine collection.”
“I’m not being ironic, I’m not trying to be offensive,” Stern told 1010 WINS. “I have a lot of Hindu customers that while they would not necessarily eat the Ganesh, they enjoy the beauty and the work that goes into it.” Stern said some of her Hindu customers use the edible statues to honor the deity. “Somebody I know bought a bunch of them for a Hindu wedding shower, and there were the elder Hindu ladies who said they wouldn’t eat it but they loved it and it was beautiful and took it home,” she said.
However, not all Hindus are opposed to the sale of the figurines. “We Hindus look at the universe as eternal and god almighty as one,” said Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America in Queens. “So we would not say that the lord resides only in that little piece of chocolate. It’s more like when they eat it, the lord comes back to us – he is within us,” she told The New York Times. “Our own Indian children would love to have some candies like this,” she added.