From: Anand
Date: Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 9:38 PM
Subject: The Idea Celluar Campaign
To: rajeev.srinivasan@gmail.com
The most insidious often comes packaged in innocence and innocuousness. I refer to the Idea mobile telephone service commercials featuring Abhishek Bachhan as a Christian Father, having a brainwave to impart education to underprivileged children in remote hamlets.
The campaign per se is brilliant and some of the ads are really eligible for awards, in particular the one where an ordinary looking small boy bowls a googly to an ostentious NRI, giving him directions in fluent English. Other commercials are also interesting.
Then what am I compaining about? Two points in particular.
One commercial shows an old man giving thanks to the lord for the food he is about to eat, in English, and proudly tells his astonished friend that his granddaughter taught him to do so. It is downright proselytising, I feel. Giving thanks or remembering one's Ishta Devata before eating one's food is not an alien concept to Hinduism. And yes, it is notable that all those whose lot is improved by this education are Hindus. Why not show a Muslim old man giving thanks to the Lord in English? Perhaps they don't want fatwas and violent demonstrations!
The other point is Abhishek Bachhan looking up at (not in the frame but the inference is obvious) an idol of Jesus above the altar and thanking him, 'what an idea, Sir Jee'.
I don't deny the contribution of missionaries to education, especially in establishing convent schools as a premium niche, but then, here, I distinctly smell proselytising!
Bad idea, sir jee.... please stop airing this thanksgiving ad, its insulting the Hindu culture, and edit the end too. You could have someone thanking the Father as it is his idea, that seems acceptable.
Had someone done such a campaign with an overt Hindu expresseion, I am sure the secular press would have pounced on the advertiser and the ad agency for bringing communalism to communication. That would have been aborted on the drawing board as 'politically incorrect', but this?
Bad idea, sir jee...
2 comments:
My apologies. Wanted to post the comments in this thread.
There are many indian catholics sporting bindi, flowers , bangles and even mangal sutra (it is gold right;) with names like Damayanthi , Shivajyothilakshmi....
sonia while visiting Mael Maruvattur Temple had a bindi emblazoned on her forehead.
Once on ndtv , a group of beggardeshis declared:
" we lost the 1971 war because we allowed our womenfolk to wear sarees ".
The secular anchor nodded approvingly
I had mentioned these sneaky ads in my comments under the blog dated Wednesday, August 27, 2008 " “Hindustan Times: Conversions at the root of carnage in Orissa” , but I am very glad that this has now formed the topic of a separate blog. At the same time,
The ads are truly sneaky attempts at proselytisation, but they are also insulting to Indians. To repeat what I posted under the earlier blog, “The “Idea” seems to be to create scenes showing that the poor in India are only semi-human at best, and the Lord who lives somewhere in the skies has sent his superhuman agents (i.e, missionaries) to enable the anthropoids to learn to speak English and enjoy themselves.” The persons who prepared the ads has gone out of the way to show the poor children and also the adults as semi-human freaks who need to be civilised by the Christist missionaries. For example, the ads show a kid who is obviously suffering from gynaecomastia; the old man is shown as an abject, servile creature, with an “Uncle Tom” mentality. The poor in India may be really poor, but the vast majority of them still possewss a degree of self respect, and conduct themselves with dignity. They will not crawl and creep like the old man in the “!dea” ads. … and I have to disagree with Anand’s view on the “ordinary looking small boy”. In the ad. he is not speaking “fluent” English, but is repeating, like a parrot, some noises he has been taught. At one point, he hesitates in his delivery, obviously to try and remember what noise he should make next.
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