A wave of outrage is pouring in through social media after the Fort Bend County Republican Party sponsored an ad that features a sketch of the Goddess outlining all her virtues and reads: \u201cWould you worship a donkey or an elephant? The choice is yours.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Donkeys are the political symbol of the Democrats while elephants are that of the Republicans.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n The ad, run by the Indian Herald, was released on September 12, ahead of a 10-day festival celebrating Ganesha on September 13.<\/p>\n The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) said they appreciated the party\u2019s attempt to \u201creach out\u201d<\/em> to Hindus on the important festival but nonetheless hit out at the party\u2019s choice of advertisement saying it was \u201coffensive.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Republican ad, \u201cequating Hindus\u00a0veneration of the Lord Ganesha with choosing a political party based on its animal symbol \u2014 is problematic and offensive,\u201d<\/em> Rishi Bhutada, a board member with the Hindu American Foundation, said in a statement.<\/a><\/p>\n He added that using religious references for political purposes should \u201cbest be avoided\u201d by all political parties.<\/p>\n An outraged public flocked to social media to condemn the party.<\/p>\n Fort Bend apologized for the ad, saying it was never its intent to offend anyone and that they were merely trying to \u201cproperly pay respect to the sacred festival.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If you like this story, share it with a friend!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Texas Republicans have been slammed with a string of stinging accusations \u2013 from being \u201cracist\u201d to \u201ccultural appropriators\u201d \u2013 as they ran an ad featuring Hindu deity Ganesha in a bid to attract Indian-American voters. A wave of outrage is pouring in through social media after the Fort Bend County Republican Party sponsored an ad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":378241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-378240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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