NEW DELHI: Furniture and clothing brand Fabindia has been forced to remove a tweet aimed at promoting their new collection for Diwali after a massive backlash on social media.
Thousands of people slammed Fabindia, while accusing them of “defacing” the Hindu festival of Diwali and terming it Jashn-e-Riwaaz. The team of The New Indian visited markets across India to find out what shoppers felt about the whole issue.
“This should not have happened. I am totally against it and would request the brand to not attempt anything like this in the future,” Devika Rathi said.
Many expressed unhappiness against the brand, calling it a veiled attempt to promote secularism by juxtaposing Islamic ideologies on a Hindu festival.
Deepavali is not Jash-e-Riwaaz.
This deliberate attempt of abrahamisation of Hindu festivals, depicting models without traditional Hindu attires, must be called out.
And brands like @FabindiaNews must face economic costs for such deliberate misadventures. https://t.co/uCmEBpGqsc
— Tejasvi Surya (@Tejasvi_Surya) October 18, 2021
“The ad did not have any relevance to Hindu culture and that’s why I found it weird. They should have maybe called it ‘Utsav’, ‘Diwali Utsav’ or ‘Tyoharon Ka Utsav’. Can’t say on what the company was thinking while making the creative but our sentiments are definitely hurt looking at the ad. Be it Eid, Diwali or Christmas, all festivals are joyous and are celebrated and defined in a certain manner and we expect them to advertised in the same way,” Giriraj Singh, a Fabindia customer told the New Indian.
Diwali Collection by @FabindiaNews 🙏
Mughal Style of Fashion , No Bindi, Dressing Style is not Hindu.
I was right Diwali got nothing to do with Hindus. pic.twitter.com/Vo14frYNmc
— Superastar Raj 🇮🇳 (@NagpurKaRajini) October 18, 2021
This is what the tweet by Fab India had read “As we welcome the festival of love and light, Jashn-e-Riwaaz by Fabindia is a collection that beautifully pays homage to Indian culture,” which has now been deleted.
Some customers, however, stood by the brand, saying this could be a one off mistake or that issue was blown out of proportion
“Trolling is not called for. Today on any matter, one can create any kind of controversy. Now it’s an open defamation ground and anyone can open the mouth and speak anything about anybody. I think it’s called Jashn-e-Riwaaz just because it has some Urdu terms in it, you want to scandalize the entire issue,” said Ajay Sharma, a shopper at Khan Market.
Wearing #Fabindia for a #kathak class.
Just like kathak, Urdu is very much Hindustani. And very beautiful both.
It’s very illogical to me that someone would hate a language born in their own country, used in their songs, spoken everyday by the very same people! Strange 🤷🏻♀️ pic.twitter.com/fKc1WalIJd
— Hana Mohsin Khan | هناء (@girlpilot_) October 19, 2021
“What’s the problem if the phrase Jashn-e-Riwaaz was used instead of Diwali. I don’t think it should be mattering anywhere just because it’s an Urdu term,” Ponnam Lau stressed.
Similar advertisements from different companies like Tanishq and Surf excel have been criticized in the past for ‘deliberately’ hurting the sentiments of Hindu community.
It is yet to be seen whether Fabindia that was started in 1960 by American businessman John Bissell will issue any further rejoinder but the opinion on street is somewhere skewed against Fabindia this time.