Titan-owned jewellery brand Tanishq has withdrawn its ad campaign after being trolled by Twitter users. The ad campaign called "Ekatvam" (Oneness) was taken down after it was attacked for glorifying 'love jihad'.
The 45-second clip features a Muslim family celebrating a traditional South Indian baby shower of their pregnant daughter. The advertisement was accused of 'love jihad', a term referring to an alleged venture by Muslims to convert Hindu girls in the name of love.
The ad campaign received heavy backlash from various accounts on Twitter with the hashtag #BoycottTanishq. Several claimed that it hurt the sentiments of a religious community and claimed it promoted fake secular ideas.
A part of Twitter came in support of the ad and said it promoted the beauty of inter-faith marriages. Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor also condemned the vicious attack on the campaign. In a tweet, he said, "If Hindu-Muslim “ekatvam” irks them so much, why don’t they boycott the longest surviving symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity in the world -- India?
"The boycott of Tanishq is necessary in the same way as the Surf Excel," says Supreme Court Advocate Prashant Patel Umrao.<\p>
VHP national spokesperson Vinod Bansal said, "Some people are not getting rid of the petty antics of business due to constant disputes."<\p>
Novelist Chetan Bhagat tweeted, "I wonder what Mahatma Gandhi would have said about #Tanishq ad?"<\p>
"As Hindus we need to be absolutely conscious of what these creative terrorists are injecting in to our subconscious, we must scrutinise, debate and evaluate what is the outcome of any perception that is fed to us, this is the only way to save our civilisation," tweeted Kangana Ranaut.<\p>
Author Nilanjana Roy tweeted, "The Tatas and #Tanishq have been viciously targetted because their campaign is about values like interfaith harmony, oneness, dismantling prejudices."<\p>