It wasn’t, as many have supposed, an advertisement developed by Coca-Cola. It wasn’t designed as an attack against Hinduism, or any religion.
It was just a thought experiment.
Thought experiments are, it seems, outrageous to many Hindus. The web site of the mythological discussion group has been flooded with demands from Hindus that the picture be censored.
Many of the demands contain threats of legal action. Others contain threats of physical violence, including riots, beatings, rape, and the hanging of the image’s designer.
It is because of those threats that I place this image here. When religious zealots attempt to intimidate people into self-censorship, the best response is to repeat the blasphemy they seek to silence.
No one has the right to live in a world where nothing ever offends them. Once we allow violence and threats to restrict our thoughts and our speech, we surrender to those who seek to make their authority over our lives a matter of faith.
We place the image of Arjuna and Krishna drinking Coca-Cola here because of the demands that it appear nowhere.