Flag burning in India. Look, it is not the American flag! ... but Australia's?

Over the decades, we have gotten used to photographs of protesters around the world burning "Old Glory."  And, often enough, effigies of American presidents as well.

So much so that the only time photos of flags being burned get my attention is when it is not the American flag. Which is how this photo of the Australian flag being burnt makes it an interesting news.

No, the Australian government didn't launch any military operations to incur the wrath of these protesters.  And, no, it is not because of Oprah's gazillion dollar trip down under along with a planeload of adoring fans.

The Aussie flag was burnt because images representing the Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, were used on swimsuits by Australian designer Lisa Blue

Swift was the response:

A statement attributed to Lisa Blue Swimwear, headquartered in Byron Bay said: "We would like to offer an apology to anyone we may have offended and advise that the image of Goddess Lakshmi will not appear on any piece of Lisa Blue swimwear for the new season, with a halt put on all production of the new range and pieces shown on the runway from last week removed.

"This range will never be available for sale in any stockists or retail outlets anywhere in the world. We apologize to the Hindu community and take this matter very seriously".

(editor: ahem, by reproducing those images here, aren't you attracting criticism as well? 
If it does, it will be no different from the nasty comments that a couple of readers left in response to my post on Islam and modern art!)

This is, yet again, a reminder that religion is alive and well in the public spaces of the world.  I keep telling my students this, and I hope some actually pay attention--economic development correlated with a secular public space in the West, and we assumed it would be the same case everywhere.  But, it is increasingly turning out that economic development and globalization are actually strengthening religions and their institutions.  It is a completely different paradigm.

Here is Timothy Samuel Shah:

Modernization and globalization are bringing increasingly rapid social and moral change to people all over the world, especially those prosperous enough to consume satellite TV and the internet. Such innovations are widely welcomed, but they also help create a pervasive perception among modern publics that traditional ways of life are getting lost -- a perception the Pew Global Attitudes Project has identified in almost every society in the world.
One way some groups try to offset the perceived decline of tradition is to identify with religious revivalism. This dynamic is one factor behind the strong and consistent support for Hindu revivalism among large segments of India's urban middle class, as well as a similar pattern of urban middle-class support for Buddhist revivalism in Sri Lanka.
It is relevant to note here that combining advanced modernity and religiosity is hardly new: The U.S. is probably the most salient and longstanding case of a society that has consistently combined intense modernity with relatively high religiosity, private and public. As we discussed in the article, at least some evidence from both the Pew Research Center and the World Values Survey suggests that both private and public religiosity have, if anything, become more robust in the U.S. in recent years. Religion is showing signs of new private and public vitality in many places in the world, not just among people that are economically insecure and underdeveloped

Thus, the following BBC news doesn't surprise me at all:

The Allahabad High Court has issued notices to the Hindustan Times group for publishing the photos that show female models wearing the swimwear.

Oh well, I might as well end this post on a "cheeky" note :)