For many, the poster stand that periodically appears every
quarter in front of Ackerman Union provides an opportunity to leaf
through hundreds of gigantic artworks with which to decorate dorms
and apartments.
But, for a group of Hindu students, the stand became an insult
to their religion and culture in the last couple days.
One poster on display in front of the student store depicts a
distorted scene from a Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita, in
which the 1960s rock legend Jimi Hendrix’s face replaces that
of an incarnation of the Hindu god Krishna, said Vimal Desai, a
third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student who is
active in the Hindu community at UCLA.
Parts of the artwork was used in Hendrix’s 1967 album,
“Axis: Bold as Love.”
The poster offended several students mainly in the Hindu
community on campus and prompted them to ask both the stand’s
employees and the student store’s management to remove the
display.
Second-year aerospace engineering student Amit Shah said he
noticed the poster on his way back from class and complained to
employees.
Though students were not received with direct response or action
Monday, representatives of the poster company, beyondthewall.com,
said they would not want any poster that offended students to be on
display and added that they would happily remove the poster since
it does not sell well anyway.
The space in front of Ackerman is rented out through the book
store, Book Zone in the union.
The community of students who had complaints about the art said
their only aim is the removal of the poster and would not pursue
the issue once it was removed.
The main concern that some students had was that cultural and
religious figures were being used as forms of entertainment.
“It is making light of what we worship by putting Jimi
Hendrix in the form of a Hindu god. … They should be more
sensitive about what they are putting out there,” said
first-year undeclared student Anand Gandhi.
Desai agreed that by distorting a figure that the Hindu religion
asks its practitioners to emulate, the poster “ridicules our
religion and culture.”
The students also said they would not fault Hendrix for the art,
but generally blamed a Judeo-Christian society that is sometimes
ignorant to significant figures in other cultures.
“I think its a matter of misunderstanding; its a matter of
principle. … Most people wouldn’t like something like that
to be (done) to Christ,” Gandhi said.
The poster stand sells mainly large posters of celebrities,
reprints of well-known paintings and other images that may be
popular with most students on campus.