Hundreds of Buddhists led by maroon-robed monks have marched through western Nepal demanding a ban on the U.S. movie "Hollywood Buddha," incensed by a poster showing the film's director sitting on the head of a Buddha image.
The protests took place in the western town of Rupandehi, near Buddha's birthplace, Wednesday after the Buddhists read about the controversial poster in local newspapers, an activist said.
"The head is the most sacred part of the body and any one sitting on it is an insult not only to our religion but the Buddhist cultural heritage," Nurbu Lama, chief of the Buddhist Unity Society said by phone from the town, 190 miles from Kathmandu.
Writer and director Philippe Caland, who also stars in the YBG Productions film, earlier this month apologized to Buddhist Thais after a public outcry and promised to withdraw the poster.
Buddhists make up around 10 percent of Nepal's mainly Hindu 25 million population.
The film's Web site www/ybg.com/hollywoodbuddha says it is about an independent Hollywood film producer who struggles to keep his head above water as everything falls apart around him.
Bolstered by mantras and a statue of Buddha rented for $2,000 a month, he tries to release his unsaleable last feature into a moneymaking venture, it says.