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Hindu interfaith leader urges Bangkok eatery to drop Lord Hanuman's name
Akara Sky Hanuman claims to be “the world’s first & highest Thai cultural rooftop experience”.
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Ishani Duttagupta - Sat, 11, Jul 2026
- 12:19 EDT
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Rajan Zed / Image provided
Prominent Hindu American and interfaith leader Rajan Zed has urged owners of an upscale rooftop restaurant in Bangkok—Akara Sky Hanuman—to remove Hindu deity Lord Hanuman’s name and symbols from the Hanuman Sky Bar & Restaurant, calling it highly inappropriate.
“Lord Hanuman was highly revered in Hinduism and was meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not for selling liquor and beef. Inappropriate usage of sacred Hindu deities or concepts or symbols or icons for mercantile greed or other agenda was not okay, as it hurt the devotees,” Zed, who is based in Reno, Nevada, said in a statement.
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Zed, who gained prominence for leading the first official Hindu prayer in the US Senate and is the president of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged Akara Sky Hanuman and its CEO to offer a formal apology; besides changing the name of Hanuman Sky Bar & Restaurant and removing from it all the symbols representing Lord Hanuman.
“Selling beef and alcoholic drinks in the name of a Hindu deity and right near his large statue is a desecration. Cow, the seat of many deities, is sacred and has long been venerated in Hinduism. Akara Sky Hanuman management should have shown some maturity when naming a bar-restaurant.”
Zed, who is known to regularly campaigns against what he considers the commercial appropriation and misuse of Hindu deities, further said that such trivialization of a greatly venerated Hindu deity was disturbing to the Hindus world over. Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it were insensitive, Zed added.
Akara Sky Hanuman claims to be “the world’s first & highest Thai cultural rooftop experience”. It is stated to be “276 metres above Bangkok” in three levels and ten zones. Besides Hanuman Sky Bar & Restaurant, its other experiences include Sky Observation Deck, Sky Night Market, Virtual Loy Krathong, Hanuman Cinema, Siam Societies, Siam Costumes, Bangkok Reflection, Baan Hanuman, Sky Thai Kitchen and Virtual Sky Lantern.
Majestic rooftop destinations should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege, and ridiculing entire communities. It was deeply trivializing of the immensely venerated Lord Hanuman to be treated like this,” Zed emphasized.
“Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about 1.2 billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not be taken frivolously. Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled.”
In 2023, luxury hotel chain Kempinski offered “most sincere apologies” and “deepest regrets” and renamed its bar carrying the name of Hindu deity Hanuman in its Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok after Hindus protested calling it “highly inappropriate."
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