The advertisement is taken off. It is condemned. It is socially boycotted. It caused outrage. It died within a day. We are not talking about an Ad that is racially discriminating in colour or caste. We are not talking about an Ad of Fair and Lovely announcing that they are now glow and lovely. We are talking about an Ad that is showing, unity, tolerance and diversity. The Popular Indian jewellery brand Tanishq has withdrawn its advertisement featuring an interfaith couple celebrating the baby shower of an expectant mother. This withdrawal was not in the “so called” backward, narrow Middle Eastern society but in the “so labeled” secular, tolerant and progressive society of India.
What the world has witnessed in the last few years is what India really is. Some blame it on the BJP government, some on populism but the fact remains that mask of moderation in the social fabric of India has slipped off to show a desperation for racial, caste and religious superiority. This face of India is perhaps new to the world but its key profile was always there in some form or the other. What has happened in Kashmir is shocking presently but what has been happening in India to the lower castes is a story from time immemorial. India has been culturally discriminatory for a long time. Birth discrimination is almost considered normal. The caste that you are born in helps or hinders your progress in life. Brahmins have a stepping stone and Dalits a stumbling stone due to their birth.
Despite these cultural divisions India had managed well to place itself as a country who was going away from its traditions to become a progressive nation. The 1980s and 1990s saw India positioning itself successfully as an open society. They undertook government reforms to make India less protective and inward looking with a more outward world view made. In the late 1990s, India followed up this change of direction with aggressive marketing that started to place India as a rising Asian power.
When nations want to project themselves globally they need various communication platforms. America became a superpower not only due the industrial prowess but due to the constant projection and marketing blitz through Hollywood movies. The whole world was fascinated by the glamour, adventure and rich land of opportunity that the movies depicted the USA to be. Similarly, India projected itself as a force to reckon with through Bollywood. The gloss, the entertainment and the huge market became alluring for many global investors. From Sony, to Microsoft, to McDonald all came swarming in to cash in on the biggest consumer market in South Asia.
India’s skilled marketing machine packaged India’s flaws cleverly. The oppression in Kashmir was masked under ‘militancy from Pakistan’. For years they lobbied, campaigned, propagated the image of Pakistan as a terror exporting nation. Post 9/11 the terror attacks within Pakistan reinforced this image. Every attack in India and in Kashmir was successfully laid on Pakistan’s shoulders. While Pakistan was reeling under terrorism and corruption, India was perceived as an emerging power along with China. Politically, the USA needed a foil for China in Asia and allied with India to brand Pakistan as mischief maker in the region. Lately, in the last few years, cracks had started appearing on the ‘shining India’ slogan. There are three areas where India has been unmasked:
Not just a victim but a sponsor of terror- Post 9/11 India had made an aggressive push to brand Pakistan as a terrorist. The brand means Pakistan harbours terrorists and then attacks India and Afghanistan through them. This narrative has been carefully crafted through their slick lobbyists in the USA and carefully placed consultants in foreign think tanks. Pakistan, on the other hand had no strategy to counter their narrative for years. The USA was always reinforcing that brand by asking “do more”. In the last two years Pakistan’s campaign on Narendra Modi and his party RSS as followers of Hitler’s Nazi philosophy has resonated with the world and has started reversing the tide.
Dark, Not so “Shining India”- It is only since PM Modi started his blatant Hindutva campaign on Muslim cleansing that the smears on “Incredible India” became noticeable. With its Kashmir blunder India gave Pakistan the chance to expose their designs at the international level. For the first time foreign media has started exposing the dark side of India. In Foreign Policy magazine an article” Indians and Central Asians Are the New Face of the Islamic State” published on October 8, 2020 clearly ripped off the Indian façade of moderation. The article says “Central Asians and Indians in transnational attacks is a relatively new phenomenon that reflects a shifting pattern in jihadism linked to the Islamic State. Some of the group’s most dramatic attacks like the Easter 2019 Sri Lanka bombings, the attack on a Turkish nightclub on New Year’s Eve 2017, or the 2017 truck attacks in New York City and Stockholm were linked to them”.
Not moderate but an extremist India- While Pakistan was painted extremist, India was branded modernist. No longer. World’s largest publications like Economist have recently had a title cover of “Intolerant India” and tweeted “How India’s prime minister and his party are endangering the world’s biggest democracy.” Describing the rise of the BJP with the movement for a Ram temple in the ‘80s, the article argues that “Mr Modi and the BJP are likely to benefit politically by creating divisions over religion and national identity”. The banning of the Tanishq Ad shows how the mindset of the average Indian has narrowed down to Hindu superiority. The fact that a company like TATA was forced to withdraw Tanishq Ad showing a Muslim family celebrating a Hindu daughter-in-law’s pregnancy is alarming. Twitter trends breaking all records with #BoycottTanishq hashtag is reflective of how deep the seeds of discrimination and division are.
India’s economic prowess and beautiful marketing had for long masked the ugly reality beneath. Indians went into a comfort zone and denial of this truth. Sometime back the Hollywood hit “Slum Dog Millionaire” was rejected by Indians and by Bollywood mega stars as it showed the slums of Mumbai as they actually are. Each nation has a time for reckoning. India’s economy is battered by the pandemic and is showing a slide. In their obsession to oppress Kashmiris and minorities in India they have let the economy slip. Whether this slip is just a stumble of a few steps or a tumble of a big fall is the question. The answer will depend on whether they admit, realize and work on the core values of secularism, or, remain consumed by their single-minded obsession of Hindutva.
(The writer can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020