It was just a few weeks ago when Tanishq had to face the public ire owing to an inter-faith ad for their Ekvatam range that did not sit well with the Indian audience. Headed by a Muslim man as the brand manager, Tanishq was accused of promoting love jihad and anti-Hindu ideology. The advertisement thus received heavy backlash with #BoycottTanishq trending on social media and the brand was forced to take it down. Following the same, Tanishq had also released a public apology.
However, all that said and done, the jewellery brand is facing the heat yet again, this time for another ad. This ad features Alaya F, Neena Gupta, Sayani Gupta, and Nimrat Kaur and explores how these women look forward to celebrating Diwali with their families this year. The messaging is somewhat on the following lines: “This Diwali, let’s unite and celebrate with those closest to our hearts; for this captures Ekvatam.”
In the ad, Sayani has also talked about celebrating a safe Diwali sans any crackers and that’s exactly the part that has apparently angered the Indian Twitterati yet again. Not quite settled even with the first ad’s controversy yet, a faction of Twitterati is again angry with Tanishq as they ask the jewellery brand to stop with the charade and not to teach Hindus how to celebrate their festival. Karnataka MLA CT Ravi has slammed the ad and called out the brand for trying to lecture Hindus on how to celebrate their festival. Here’s his tweet:
Honestly, the MLA’s outrage is pretty ironic given that Karnataka happens to be one of the states who have decided to ban crackers this Diwali keeping in consideration the COVID-19 patients and how it might affect them adversely. But then again, he is not the only one who seems to be projecting what looks like some of the residual outrage on the brand. In fact, some of them are so committed to the aim of boycotting Tanishq that they are literally challenging the brand by saying that they are totally going to burst crackers this Diwali.
Of course, this follows no logic but then again it was long back when logic was left to reckless abandon. In fact, some of these enraged netizens have also started recirculating Tanishq’s apology from the first ad. In the apology, Tanishq had talked about how the core idea behind Ekvatam was to bring everyone together sans any boundaries of caste, class, and religion and how the film has received “Severe reactions contrary to its very objective.” The brand has also mentioned that it decided to take off the ad because of the “hurt sentiments” and also the well being of all the employees and partners associated with the brand.
Some people on Twitter are now calling it to cover up for their anti-Hindu sentiments:
Interestingly, as these people on Twitter ‘call-out’ Tanishq’s agenda and anti-Hindu campaigning, they have launched a parrel campaign against the brand, complete with posters urging to “Boycott Tanishq.” The posters also illustrate how this is an anti-Hindu brand that has been promoting love jihad:
To sum it up, warnings have been issued and sweeping assumptions have been made as they call the Ekvatam campaign an international conspiracy against Hindus. Yup!
And as the Indian netizens go on bashing the ad, they have also started dragging other religions in the discourse. Of course, they do not realise the hypocrisy here and how right when they call out Tanishq for targeting Hindusim, they are doing the exact same by targeting the other religions.
After all the outrage, Tanishq has taken down this ad as well. However, no official statement has been released from the brand yet. That said, we wonder if the very same advertisement would have earned a similar reaction had it been from some other brand.
Nowhere in the entire video do the actresses express anything against Diwali or the Hindu culture and as for Sayani’s “definitely no crackers” dialogue, that’s exactly what the government is trying to convey currently, right? Then what exactly is the big deal again?
Featured Image: YouTube
