Acharya Prashant addresses the controversy surrounding a cartoon by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which satirized the inability of India's 33 million gods to produce oxygen during the COVID-19 crisis. He acknowledges that the cartoon is crude and the angry reaction from many Hindus is natural. However, he urges a deeper introspection into why such a mockery is possible in the first place. He argues that the cartoonists are able to make such a statement because Hindus themselves have reduced their gods and goddesses to entities that solve worldly problems. The world gets the message that Hindu deities are involved in mundane affairs because people pray for things like building a house, protecting a car, having a child, or succeeding in business. Consequently, when a worldly calamity like an oxygen shortage strikes, the world logically questions why these same gods are not providing a worldly solution. The premise of the satire, he explains, is built upon the very behavior of the devotees. This situation arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of divinity, religion, and spirituality. People rely on fables and stories instead of studying the original scriptures, thereby assigning worldly forms and human-like roles to the ultimate truth, expecting it to fulfill their material desires. Acharya Prashant clarifies that divine power is meant for higher, spiritual purposes, not for trivial, everyday matters. The role of divinity is to awaken the divine within a person, not to act as a worldly helper. Using divine powers for mundane gains is a profound disrespect and belittlement of their true nature. If one truly respects the gods, the prayer should be for liberation from the self and illusion (maya), not for material benefits. By involving gods in petty, worldly desires, people inadvertently give the world the license to mock their faith.
