- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA is in the middle of its grand festive season but the country’s top commercial brands are less enthusiastic, thanks to the constant pressure they are facing from right-wing hardliners accusing them of insulting Hindu sentiments.
According to critics, growing religious intolerance and fear is something that India has been witnessing since Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi became the prime minister of the country in 2014, AFP reported. This has resulted in a rise in hatred on social media and physical attacks on the country’s minority groups, particularly Muslims.
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From clothing and furniture retailer FabIndia to wellness company Dabur, firms had to withdraw advertisements ahead of Diwali, one of India’s most popular festivals, as the right-wing groups accused them of being anti-Hindu.
Javed Akhtar talks about on FabIndia’s Jashn-e-Riwaaz controversy
FabIndia, for example, triggered an online storm after it used an Urdu term ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ (celebration of tradition) to describe its latest festive collection. While Urdu has originated in India and is one of the country’s 22 official languages and uses a Persian-Arabic script, it has been dubbed as “Muslim language”. The language is the national language of Pakistan, India’s foremost foe.
Several conservative Hindu voices said Urdu should not be used to describe their rituals and festivals. There were also others who were angered by the fact that the women who featured in the advertisement were not wearing a bindi (a decorative dot worn by Hindu women in the middle of the forehead). Soon, the hashtag #NoBindiNoBusiness started trending on Twitter.
Tejasvi Surya, a hardliner parliamentarian from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party from South India, slammed FabIndia saying it “must face economic costs for such deliberative misadventures”.
FabIndia defended itself saying the collection was not for Diwali and that it has “always stood for the celebration of India with its myriad traditions in all hues”. It though pulled down the controversial advertisement.
Dabur also came up with an advert showing two women in a same-sex partnership celebrating ‘Karwa Chauth’, a festival in which married Hindu women pray and fast for the longevity of their husbands.
The wellness firm had to withdraw the advert facing intense pressure online and that left the conservative Hindu camp elated. One such Hindu Twitter user whose bio calls for global supremacy of Hinduism, wrote, “That’s the power of United Hindus! Well done Hindus!” the AFP report added.
Celebrated designers in India have also faced the wrath of the right-wing outfits. Sabyasachi Mukherjee, whose creations are popular with several Indian celebrities in India and abroad, came up with a promotional campaign showing seductive close-up images of women and men wearing a traditional mangalsutra necklace, which is usually worn by married Hindu women.
A BJP politician from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh where the saffron party is in power slammed the campaign as “objectionable and obscene” and even threatened to have the designer arrested. Mukherjee pulled the ad later.
Manyavar, a clothing brand, also had to withdraw its campaign after one of its ads featuring Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt appeared to question a traditional marriage ritual. Last year, jewellery brand Tanishq, which is owned by noted Indian conglomerate Tata, was forced to withdraw an advert that showed an interfaith couple at a baby shower ceremony organised for the Hindu bride by her in-laws who belong to the Muslim community.
Tanishq was accused of glorifying “love jihad”, a term which has been coined by nationalist extremists who accuse Muslim men of seducing Hindu women and forcing them to convert. Not only the brand faced a backlash but even a store manager in Gujarat, the home state of prime minister Modi, was forced to issue an apology note by men who intimidated him at his shop.
These instances have happened besides physical attacks on Muslims and lower-caste Hindus for cow slaughter and vandalism of churches.
Even those from the minority community in the entertainment industry have faced similar hostility. Recently, three shows in Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, featuring comedian Munawar Faruqui were cancelled after Bajrang Dal, a Hindu right-wing group, threatened to set the venues on fire.
Faruqui, who was arrested in January in a case that accused him of insulting Hindu gods and goddesses, told Indian news channel NDTV in an interview Monday that he gets “50 threat calls daily”.
Also last month, members of Bajrang Dal vandalised the set of web-series ‘Ashram’ in Madhya Pradesh and attacked producer-director Prakash Jha with ink, accusing him of showing the majority community in a bad light.
According to analysts, these incidents are happening since both the ruling party and the government are silent about it.
“Because of the silence at the top both in the government and the party, people at the lower end, the rank and file, feel they can flex their muscles and indulge in such ruffian behaviour,” political analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao told AFP.
“The pendulum is swinging towards right-wing attitudes which has become sort of legitimate because of the right-wing government.”
