Why the 'open letter' against 'racist' ad was addressed to Aishwarya Rai, not Kalyan Jewellers

Before the ‘underage slave-child’ surfaced in an unimaginative Kalyan Jewellers print advertisement - holding a parasol as Aishwarya Rai pays tribute to her one expression in Devdas - there were no dearth of rotten stereotypes in Indian commercials and ads. Racial profiling, gender stereotypes, sexist jokes - apart from general stupidity - are recurrent motifs in Indian advertisements. For example, from detergent to bathroom cleaners, from  utensil cleaning soaps to room fresheners, every product that has to do with scrubbing, cleaning and washing, inevitably has a female protagonist. They lazily endorse the idea that it is women who should be burdened with the responsibility of keeping utensils sparkling and the husband’s shirts shiny and preferably smelling of jasmine or rose. Then there are the insurance ads - where the seller and the buyer - are both inevitably men, suggesting that the power, intelligence and responsibility of handling a family’s finances should rest with the man. Then there are ads that sell fairness creams.  Ads that suggest a man’s desirability is directly proportional to the gel he has dunked his head in. Or ads that say that deodorants have the magical power to freeze Indian women’s brains and fire her loins - simultaneously. This ad was just a whiter shade of pale in a country obsessed with products to make you feel whiter everywhere. And we are so blase about our white fixation that the ad’s makers probably just thought of the colonial imagery as quaint rather than racist. Chances are, you have heard mutters of discontent, a tweet here and a Facebook post there about them, but nothing that forced an agency to withdraw an advertisement  in the recent times. Kalyan Jewellers, however, had no such luck. The advertisement shows a malnourished, dark boy, struggling to hold a parasol atop Rai’s head. The letter, written by activists for Scroll, points out that it seems to be promotion child labour in a country which is already reeling under poverty and is struggling to end child labour. [caption id=“attachment_2211612” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Kalyan Jewellers advertisement.[/caption] After it went viral, the actor’s publicist issued a clarification, saying that Rai was not aware of the creative team’s visualisation. So what made sure that this particular ad was taken to the cleaners, while several hundreds of discriminatory ads are noticed but don’t draw as much a murmur of protest? Primarily, it was Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Though brands much bigger and better known than Kalyan Jewellers are guilty of stereotyping in their advertisements, this one stuck out because it had Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as its face. So the possibility of the underscoring the ineptitude and callousness of Indian advertising was bigger. Understandably thus, the ‘open letter’ was addressed to Aishwarya and just her. The authors of the ‘open letter’ - writers and activists - are surely aware of the processes involved in the publishing of an advertisement. Everyone knows that the advertisement has passed through many degrees of approval - that of the agency, the brand and perhaps the actor too - but the letter was only addressed to Rai. The actor had evidently not shot with a child - it was clear that the image of the child was one painted on to the ad by the creative agency - the picture was nowhere close to resembling a real human being. Obviously, ‘An Open Letter to Kalyan Jewellers’ wouldn’t garner the kind of attention that the letter did, nor would have served the purpose of the authors trying to protest the irresponsible symbolism of the ad. In this day and age, when we have the luxury of garnering support for our causes on internet, addressing the bigger culprits behind the ad would have perhaps not been enough to evoke moral outrage among netizens. Then again, instead of directly approaching either the actor or the other agencies involved in the making of the advertisement, the activists decided to take the social media route to take it down. So the possibility of their letter of protest dying unnoticed in a star’s inbox was avoided that way. Finally, it is much easier to take on individuals than brands, who don’t show evidence of being cornered easily. Most brands, with their understanding of market sentiments and the whimsical nature of public memory, react with great nonchalance to such protests. For example, Kalyan Jewellers knows well that an ‘open letter’ making the rounds of Twitter wouldn’t greatly dent its core customer base - very few people will actually be discouraged from buying jewellery based on the socio-political implications of a print advertisement by the brand. Mostly, the only things consumers predominantly focus on ads are information about discounts, rates etc. It is for the same reason that a brand like Fair and Lovely, despite articles and online criticism, has managed to thrive for decades and have shown no signs of being discouraged at all. The product, which comes up with the most regressive ads for an equally dubious product, comes from the stable of Hindustan Unilever which manufactures hundreds of consumer products which people are nearly conditioned to buy from habit. And while activists went after Shah Rukh Khan to ask him to stop endorsing fairness creams, their appeals went nowhere. Unlike Aishwariya Rai Bachchan who could claim she didn’t know what the final ad looked like and thus had wiggle room, Shah Rukh could hardly pretend he didn’t know what product he was endorsing. Kalyan Jewellers, it is clear, pulled the advertisement because it jeopardised the image of their brand ambassador - a big Bollywood name worried about the buzz around her. Clearly, they had not seen a problem with the ad and let it be printed over one full page and even paid crores for its publication. Their response, it is not difficult to see, comes in consideration of the damage they fear having inflicted on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s reputation. Then again, Kalyan Jewellers itself isn’t a big consumer brand like Hindustan Unilever or Emami, whose men’s fairness cream is endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan. No wonder then it wanted to put  a hurried end to the controversy and not turn a blind eye like its big brothers. And unlike fairness creams, the outrage here was over one ad that could be pulled with minimal damage to the bottomline and not against an entire product line. We can only hope that the incident leaves a dent in the conscience of brands who manipulate human insecurities quite blatantly to sell their products.