After Being Criticised For Angry Hanuman, Artist Comes Up With ‘Angry Shri Ram’

Recently, Mangaluru based sketch artist Karan Acharya was praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his ‘Angry Hanuman’ vector art. However, the image had not gone well with some people who belonged to a particular political spectrum. They had given it a communal angle and compared it to rise of militant Hinduism. The artist was widely criticised for the controversial art.

However, this has not deterred Acharya from coming up with a new vector art featuring ‘Shri Ram’.

Earlier, The Wire had carried an exclusive article titled ‘Militant Hinduism and the Reincarnation of Hanuman’ saying the sketch of Angry Hanuman which is found widely in India is not benign. “The smile on his face has been replaced with strong frown lines. He radiates mean energy against a black and saffron background. His thunderous expression spells danger, and makes it clear he is no longer a server but a destroyer,” the article said.

“My Hanuman has attitude, not aggression. He is powerful, not oppressive. But that’s the problem with art. There is no limit to interpretation,” Acharya was quoted to have said to News18.

Recently, a bureau chief who was recently posted to India had asked Twitter to delete all her ‘Angry Hanuman’ followers in a tweet.

Despite the criticism from the left, the image has remained to be quite popular across India. Recently, a report in the Times of India stated that ‘the image (Hanuman art) attained such popularity that two years later, it continues to adorn smartphones as display picture while it is a preferred choice of the youth across the country on the windshields, t-shirts and rear windows of automobiles’.