The language of intolerance

Fabindia is this year’s Tanishq, as both are victims of a senseless campaign that misrepresented their advertisements and vilified them for speaking a language that well represented India in its excellence and essential reality. The clothing and furnishing brand was targeted by an online mob for putting out an advertisement for a festival collection, described by a sparkling Urdu phrase Jashn-e-Riwaaz, which means celebration of customs.

Tejasvi Surya, MP from Bengaluru, called it an attempt to Abrahamise a Hindu festival and objected to the depiction of models without traditional Hindu attire. He was referring to the models in the ad who did not sport the traditional bindi, and he warned Fabindia of “economic costs’’ for its “misadventures’’. After the outrage and uproar on social media and the MP’s warning, Fabindia had no courage to back up its phrase and faces, and withdrew the ad.

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Last year, jewellery brand Tanishq withdrew an advertisement that featured a baby shower for an interfaith couple after it was attacked for allegedly promoting “love jihad’’. Both advertisements should actually have been praised for what they were. The Tanishq ad presented a commendable social ideal. The other used a bright Urdu expression to light up the idea of Deepavali, and the lack of bindis did not take anything away from the meaning and appeal of the festival. Urdu was born in India and is one of the country’s 22 scheduled languages. It is spoken by large numbers of people. If it is banished it is a part of India that gets banished. A Hindu without a bindi is as much a Hindu as one with it and it is wrong to prescribe dress codes for models.

But Urdu is disowned and dubbed as the language of the other and maligned, and that is the reason for the opposition to the ad. That is a sign of intolerance and bigotry that is increasingly ruling our public life and shaping the responses to people and events. The attempt is to polarise society in such a way that everything common between sections of people, including language, is broken and there is no conversation between them.

The opposition to the Fabindia ad violates freedom of speech and expression and, more than that, the idea of an inclusive and composite society that expresses itself in different languages, ways of worship and life, customs and dresses. To insist that the appearance of models in an advertisement should conform to someone’s idea of tradition is to extend the dress code to new areas. The fact that Fabindia was cowed down, like Tanishq last year, shows that the defences are breaking down. That does not help either the business or society.