‘Love Jihad’: India’s Tanishq pulls heartfelt interfaith jewellery advert after backlash from Hindu nationalists
- Hindu nationalist trolls claimed the ad was part of a conspiracy that purports Muslim men only marry women of other faiths to convert them
- Controversy surrounding the ad, which portrayed a baby shower, comes against a backdrop of rising interfaith tensions under PM Narendra Modi
The advert by Tanishq, titled “Ekatvam” (unity), features a Hindu-Muslim couple in what is supposed to be a tender testament to universal love. In it, a pregnant Hindu woman is escorted to her baby shower by an older Muslim woman she calls Ma (mother).
At the end of the video, the young woman asks the older woman, who is apparently her mother-in-law, “But this [baby shower] tradition isn’t held at your home?” The mother-in-law, whose head is covered with a scarf, replies, “Isn’t it a tradition for every home to keep [their] daughters happy?”
Not everyone who watched the advert was happy, however. Right-wing trolls flocked to it in their droves to denounce its “fake secularism”, with some saying they felt it “promoted love jihad” – a term frequently used by Hindu nationalists to allege a conspiracy in which Muslim men marry women from other religions solely to convert them to Islam.
