Gap's cool smack down to racist graffiti directed at ad with Sikh model

New York: Stroll around New York City and you’re bound to come across defaced ads, with graffiti that can be racist, stupid or just plain vulgar. The pervasiveness of such vandalism makes Gap’s response to one of its defaced ads all the more remarkable.

Racist graffiti replaced the words “Make Love” with “Make bombs” on a Gap subway poster featuring Indian-born designer and actor Waris Ahluwalia. Writer Arsalan Iftikhar alerted his Twitter followers to the defaced Gap ad that likened the 39-year-old turban-wearing Sikh model to a terrorist.

The vandal had not only replaced “Make Love” with “Make bombs,” but also scrawled; “Please stop driving taxis.”

Although Iftikar did not tag the company, a Gap executive responded immediately wanting to know the location of the defaced ad. Gap then placed Ahluwalia front and center on its Twitter and Facebook profiles. “Gap’s marketing campaign is about inspiring people to fill the world with love this holiday season. It features a range of cultural icons, including actors, singers and artistic collaborators… Gap is a brand that celebrates inclusion and diversity,” Gap said in a message which HLNtv.com/ CNN beamed to millions of viewers.

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[caption id=“attachment_1258881” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The GAP ad starring Sikh Model Waris Ahluwalia which was defaced.[/caption]

Ahluwalia is a substantial force in the fashion world. As a high-end jewelry designer his company, House of Waris, creates intricate jewelry prized the world over. Ten years ago, director Wes Anderson gave his friend Ahluwalia the role of an intrepid maritime explorer in “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” Ahluwalia has gone on to act in “The Darjeeling Limited” and “The Carrie Diaries.” His impeccably tailored suits worn with his custom pink desert boots have landed Ahuluwalia on numerous best-dressed lists.

Ahluwalia took a subtle swipe at the racist graffiti by posting a BBC article praising Sikh taxi drivers who work hard in the US to support their families in India.

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Gap’s response also triggered a “Thank you, Gap” campaign from the Sikh community which holiday shopped Gap and thanked the retailer for placing a Sikh model in prominent locations on billboards and direct mail advertising. It’s not the conventional look of New York glamour. Yet, Ahluwalia is not the only well-known Sikh model in the US. Turban-wearing Sonny Caberwal turned heads as a poster boy for US fashion giant Kenneth Cole. Ahluwalia and Caberwal who co-owns the Tavlon Tea Bar in New York stand in sharp contrast to ubiquitous clean-shaven blonde models.

Despite the pressure to “fit in” with image-obsessed 9/11-scarred America, Ahluwalia and Caberwal have not discarded their turbans and beards. In a video at KennethCole.com celebrating “Non-Uniform Thinkers” Cabrwal said 9/11 increased his resolve to keep the faith. Wiry 20-something Caberwal was part of the highly visible Kenneth Cole ad campaign in 2008.

“We’re often, in this day and age, mistaken for Muslims. I always drew strength from keeping this unique identity to remind me that I am different. For me it’s a matter of reinforcement, but for other people it’s become a symbol of hate, and a symbol of fundamentalism,” he says in the video.

“I can’t walk through an airport without getting special security screening, and having people look really afraid… In the United States we hold the idea of freedom so dear, but I think that what happens is that most people find that their limitations are not what other people impose on them. It’s the limitations they impose on themselves.”

Despite America’s efforts at being a pluralistic society, the Sikh Coalition says 60 percent of turban-wearing boys are harassed in schools. Bias attacks against Sikhs spiked after the 9/11 attacks. “Making Our Voices Heard,” a report by the Sikh Coalition, found that half of New York’s Sikh students have been bullied in school because of their turban and Indian origin.

Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner, was shot and killed in Arizona five days after 9/11 only because he was brown and bearded. This September, a Sikh professor at Columbia University was beaten by hoodlums yelling; “Get Osama.”