This Tanishq commercial has whipped up a storm. Is it really that bad?
How can a jewelry offend Indians? 2020 is really getting crazier by the day. But then again, we aren’t seeing the advert for gold, are we? That ship has sailed.
Well,the AD is not offensive. Of course, I am not offended easily so there is that. Even otherwise, there is nothing in the AD that is offensive, except their portrayal of such a close MIL-DIL. Real life meh aisa hoti hai kya?(does this happen in real life?)
hint — nope.
The implication of that AD is why there is so much outrage. I won’t blame Tata or Tanishq for coming up with a bold AD. Even if I do, it shouldn’t be something that warrants an uproar, in my humble opinion.
That said, I see why folks are upset. Again, I am not defending online attacks, trolls and in general negativity. I am not going to churn your stomach by citing horror news about couples being burnt, beheaded or in general… you know ending up dead. But I have to be honest on this one.
I see mostly progressives supporting the AD. This represents a complete disconnect from reality, their reality.
- First, has a single Muslim family member come online and said ‘Oh we would totally love to do this to our DIL if we had the money?’
- Second, do all these folks know how much cultural differences matter to people even in this day and age?
- Third, do we really want to normalize love marriages, especially inter-religion marriages? Where does this notion of love marriages being a positive come from?
So Muslims have stayed away. They know down to their bones that this is a complete no-no in their religion. As have Christians. This is the cold hard reality that most online warriors seem to be missing. I mean, anything to get back at right-wing trolls online, but lets not stretch that.
In plain intra-religion marriages, fights have broken out citing different customs and practices. An inter-religion marriage is an absolute nightmare just to pull off. So all this fairytale positivism is utter bullshit for majority of the country. Oh just to be clear, I am not bashing progressives. I am simply showing them their places. I am pro-choice, pro-LGBT, for small govt and a host of other progressive stuff. Just FYI.
I have seen super-modern girls shut up and accept the fact that they need to convert and accept only a Muslim or Christian marriage. I’ve seen them meekly surrender, going as far as changing their names on FB and removing all their duck-face and tongue-out selfies. No outrage, no online noise, no ‘positivity’. These are normal, upper middle class girls.
I have seen Rebels(in my own family no less) simply accept gag-reflex as part of their everyday sorrow when the family they get married into, cook Non-veg food. One case is an MBA-educated colleague who is a bit of phenom at her workplace. Their rebellious nature is not just clamped down, it is shot down.
I have seen pious women who never miss poojas or temple visits completely stop all of it. ALL.OF.IT. They do not even keep photos of deities for crying out loud. The boys they fell in love with, are totally cool with that.
See? I am not even running out of examples.
The reason I say all this is — religions have some things are non-negotiable. If religion and beliefs should not matter to someone — they shouldn’t matter to anyone. I have not witnessed, observed or even heard a Muslim/Christian family accept a bride/groom without conversion. I mean, this is not a big deal at all to me, but obviously it is not even up for discussion in these beliefs. This is one-way traffic, big time.
But in a fairytale romance, this should not be a problem, yes? It obviously is. I mean if your love is so absolute, the boy/girl from a family should veto this and just get married for the heck of getting married, yes? But this never happens. When I spoke to them, all of them claim that their better half/boy friend/girl friend are pristine except on this topic. That is some class-A bullshit right there.
The implications of the AD are not even the tip of the iceberg. Significant majority of inter-religion couples who fall in love may not end up dead, but they end up compromising on a lot of things like their dreams.
I write this as a father of a 30-month old girl. I am as progressive as they come. To this day, I am getting rapped for showering too much love on my baby girl. I want to give her complete freedom all through her life, obviously. I have written time and again about freedom of women in India. In fact folks constantly misunderstand me as an ultra-feminist for my views.
Decades from now, if she gets married into a family that doesn’t respect that- Hindu, Muslim or otherwise, a part of me will die.
So I understand the outrage. I just wish we were just as outraged even when families of the same-religion mistreat our women. I don’t see much noise there. I see a more ‘What happens in our house is our business’ approach there.
