So, Aamir Khan’s contentious ad for a small bank has been withdrawn. It needed to be. Not for offending religious sentiments but for being so moronically off the mark. Ads don’t have to necessarily usher in social change. Like “Amitji Loves Bikaji” makes a catchy endorsement without taking a high moral ground on any existing tradition. But if an ad filmmaker and a celebrity model want to send out a social message along with their shoutout for a product, let them at least pick up something that has been truly unseen.
Aamir’s ad that pushed the ghar jamai as a new social thought was the opposite of what it claimed to be. It was cringely regressive. Ghar jamais have always existed, they are a doleful reality. We’ve even had Hindi movies made on them. A ghar jamai is almost always a son-in-law who is not as well-to-do as his wife, circumstances making him move in either with her family or into a house bought by her parents. A sad reflection of economic inequality, it’s not the cool “social change” a right-minded person would welcome.
Fortunately, there have been a handful of ads like a ceiling and pedestal fan that had the housemaid join the family at the table, a commercial that ushered in winds of change. There was another of a bride’s little girl wanting to be included in the saat pheras and the groom scooping her up in his arms with all three completing the ceremony together. It offended nobody and registered an important societal shift that has happened in countless homes. Anil Kumble not only married a woman with a child, he also helped her battle her influential ex-husband. Decades ago, Joy Mukerji had married a girl who had a daughter and brother Deb married Ashutosh Gowariker’s mother-in-law. These are the changes we need to normalise.
If Aamir and the bank really wanted to herald a social change, here are a few ideas. We’ve never seen a man sport a mangalsutra or any equivalent piece of jewellery which signifies that he’s “taken”. We’ve never heard a woman say “Talaq, talaq, talaq” to end her marriage. Instead of ads on fragrances that attract women like bees to a male, we’ve yet to see a hunk being covered with a ghunghat or a burqa to ward off unwanted attention from the opposite sex. These, Aamir, are social changes that would be novel.
While Indian cinema has progressed in its attempts at gender sensitivity and balance, the ad world has largely lagged behind. You only have to watch the sponsors’ ads on Kaun Banega Crorepati to realise how gender-rigid they are, like mini saas-bahu serials. It’s bad enough that one has Pammi, Shammi and other women pour “pure cow ghee” over parathas with a little daughter too in the kitchen while the men, including a young boy, sit at the table and await the repast like entitled royalty. Host Amitabh Bachchan makes it worse every time he gifts the ghee to a contestant by unfailingly mentioning the mother or wife as the people who’ll be thrilled with the one-year supply of the product. Even if the male contestant in the hot seat is a part-time chef and talks about his love for cooking which came from his dad who also used to cook, Amitabh will address only the mother and note how khush she looks at the prospect of free ghee. Men in the kitchen don’t exist in this world.
On the same programme, a cement ad endorses the idea that taking a call on what brand to use while making a new home is solely a male preserve. While he makes his unilateral decision clear to the architect, she’s around only to serve tea. Even if this is what happens in most homes, such ads only perpetrate and cement traditional gender roles, they don’t even attempt to bring about a change.
But it’s still better than trying to be radically different and coming up with something that’s more insensitive than progressive. What I’d like to tell Aamir is, if the thinking feminist in you has taken a creative holiday, stick with selling ghee to women and cement to men.
Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author
