Ahead of the festive season, Tata Group's jewellery brand Tanishq, rolled out its latest commercial with a narrative around interfaith marriage.
The video shared across social media platforms, shows a Hindu woman, married into a Muslim family, all set for her baby shower.
Her in-laws decide to replicate all the traditions as per Hindu customs.
As per a description by Tanishq, “She is married into a family that loves her like their own child. Only for her, they go out of their way to celebrate an occasion that they usually don’t. A beautiful confluence of two different religions, traditions, cultures.”
However, the advertisement didn’t sit well with a section of Twitter, many touting it as ‘love jihad’.
What is love jihad?
According to reports, love-jihad or Romeo-jihad is a conspiracy theory on alleged efforts by Muslim men targeting non-Muslim women for conversion to Islam by pretending to be in love.
The term was coined after initial cases of conversion emerged in Kerala and subsequently Karnataka.
According to an article in Swarajya Magazine, “Muslim men pretend to be Hindus, make fake IDs online and offline, wear Kalava, sport a Tilak while chasing a Hindu girl. After few weeks, they establish physical relations, film the act, then go on to marry the girls. Most of the marriages are done under Sharia law where women have to convert. The girls are usually in 15-20 years age group.”
It further stated, “With no economic security and often dumped by their natal families for marrying a Muslim, these girls get trapped in an abusive relationship and a deeply unequal marital contract where women have no rights. When they protest, they are either beaten, left by the men and in some cases even killed.
The cases spread out from pretext of marriage, misleading information to gangrape where women have come forward claiming they are victims of ‘love jihad’.
Meanwhile there are those, who have asserted that it is a right-wing concept to stop inter-faith marriages.
This led to Twitter trending the hashtag #BoycottTanishq.
Meanwhile the company has turned off comments on its YouTube page, given all the flak it has been receiving.
Here are some reactions on the microblogging site.
The advertisement is a part of Tanishq’s festive season collection 'Ekatvam', which is a confluence of the country's finest art forms, intricately knitted into one.
“There is integration of various regions across India featuring 15 different art forms, bound together as one masterpiece in each piece of jewellery”, said Ajoy Chawla, CEO, Jewellery Division, Titan Company.
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