Even as the Tata group was forced to take down its Tanishq ad for promoting love jihad, it’s gone ahead and released another ad that makes fun of yoga while promoting Christian marriages.
A Tata Cliq ad, released on 14th October, mocks yoga as being ‘boring’. The ad features a voiceover saying ‘not living like a relic’ while showing a young man doing yoga. At that point, googly eyes are drawn on the man who’s in a yoga pose, and the word ‘boring’ gets plastered across his chest. The ad then says it’s ‘the year to learn a new trick’, and shows a Christian couple getting married. The wedding is being conducted online by a Christian priest.
The subliminal messaging in the ad is clear — age-old Hindu practices are ‘uncool’ and ‘boring’, while a wedding conducted by a Christian priest is hip. It’s the narrative that left-leaning media companies have been pushing through content which includes ads on radio and TV, and even shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Incredibly, the ad was released a few days after the Tata Group’s Tanishq’s ad was widely panned for promoting love jihad. After netizens had pointed out that such propaganda, which glossed over the problems faced by Hindu women in such inter-faith marriages, and could cause impressionable women to even lose their lives, Tanishq had taken the ad down. ‘Boycott Tanishq’ had trended on Twitter for an extended period, and Titan’s stock had fallen 2.5 percent the following day.
But it appears that the Tata Group appears to have have learnt no lessons from its Tanishq ad fiasco. Until a few years ago, leftist ad creators were able to ram anti-Hindu propaganda down viewers’ throats, but social media has now ensured that users are not only aware of such underhanded practices, but also know how to provide feedback through online boycotts, dislikes and app store reviews. And if Tanishq’s ad is any indication, it’s likely that Tata Cliq’s latest campaign is about to meet the same fate.
