Prime Minister Narendra during his campaign for the Karnataka Assembly elections at Nehru Maidan, Mangaluru has hailed Karan Acharya for his image of Hanuman which portrays the God in his ‘Rudra’ avatar.

Where @karanacharya7 gets a big mention while Modi blasts Congress and ecosystem. What fun! ?pic.twitter.com/9PyV47E3VE — maisooru (@maisooru) May 5, 2018

“I want to applaud artist Karan Acharya whose Hanuman portrait has captured imagination of people across India. This is a laudable achievement and is the power of his achievement, talent and imagination. This is the pride of Mangaluru. All TV channels queued up for his interview,” PM Modi said in Mangaluru.

Narendra Modi went on to add, “The Congress’ ecosystem doesn’t even tolerate the magnificent art of Karan Acharya whose Hanuman captured the imagination of the entire country. Unable to digest its success, the Congress tried miring it in a controversy. There is no iota of democracy in the minds of the Congress members.”

Karan Acharya’s image of Lord Hanuman has attracted strong backlash from liberals who have equated the picture with Hindu militancy. The concerted attack on Lord Hanuman had also prompted some to give 1 stars to Uber drivers for having pictures of the God in their cars.

Muslim passenger gives 1 star rating to Hindu driver because his name is Ram and had pics of Hindu gods in car calling it blasphemy and then insists that no Hindus in Bengal. Imagine the outrage and no. of OPEDs written on intolerance, had some Hindu done it to a Muslim driver. pic.twitter.com/aD5p5vctth — Ruchir Modi ?? (@RuchirRModi) March 30, 2018

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Criticism of the image by vested interests also led to an outpouring of love for Lord Hanuman on Twitter when people tweeted various pictures of the God with the hashtag #BajrangiTwitter. Since then, an online t-shirt portal, TShirtBhaiya.com has launched t-shirts featuring the image created by Karan Acharya after taking due permission from the artist to use his image commercially.

Narendra Modi’s voice of support for the artist and condemnation for his detractors is sure to cause more heartburn to liberals who discovered Hindu militancy in the image of Lord Hanuman.