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MAGAZINE | MAR 11, 2013

Fanning the flam es? Vikas Verma and Shanti Pandit in the ad

OPINION

The Manuscripters
The varnacular of our societys brand managers merits reading-into
VIJAY NAMBISAN Like TEXT SIZE 117 Send Tw eet 17 COMMENTS PRINT

Watching the Chennai Test against Australia, I chanced upon a new commercial for a brand of fan. A couple enter a registrars office, obviously for a civil wedding, and give their names as Vikas Verma and Shanti Pandit. The registrar notes these and says, So, after the wedding, you will be Mrs Shanti Verma. The groom, a JNU type, quickly interjects, No, madam. She will stay Shanti Pandit and Ill change my name to hers. The couple exchange a glance of understanding, and along comes the fans image and slogan, roughly The winds of change. Not bad, I thought, spuriously liberal and hypocritically feelgood as it isas, indeed, all such advertisements are. Then, I found a deeper, and more dangerous, subtext. Please to note the surnames. Verma is a Kshatr iya name; Pandit a Brahmin. The groom, by adopting the brides name, is actually being upwardly mobile. (Aryan law forbids a woman to marry beneath her, but well let that pass.) People who work for adv e rtising agencies like to think of themselves as creative, even the sales executives and (euphemism) research types. In truth, they are the most reactionary and hidebound set of drones on earth. What are the most common surnames you find in mainstream advertising and comm ercial Hindi cinema? Sharmaji is, I think, the most used, though the Brahmin population of India is less than five per cent of the total. There are plenty of Dubeys and Thakurs, and Singhs and Chaudhurys, among the well-to-do. The last two are not really caste-specific, but in the context you find them in, its easy to make out where they belong. I have yet to see a hero or protagonist in these genres of communication with a Paswan or Ahluwalia surname. A Yadav is usually risible. As for south Indian names in Bombay cinema, they havent progressed beyond Mehmoods portrayal of an Iyer in Padosan. Confront any advertising person with this fact, and she (see, I can be politically correct too) will say they are only reflecting reality. If you are only reflecting reality, what is your creativity worth? Creativity is the ability to create something new, something which can change things as they are. Mainstream Hindi cinema is not creative in this sense, because while it has changed in terms of technical sophistication and its depiction of urban mores, it has stubbornly refused to present a different, and more equitable, social prospect since probably Mother India and Garam Hawa. Which are not, of course, mainstream films in todays context. And where are the Dalits? I should think it would be easy enough to begin simply, by using the surname Kumar or Gupta, which may belong to any of a number of castes. In the 1970s we only had Ravi and Vijay, which could strike a chord in anyone. They and their ladies were fairskinned, or at least not black. The hero who found himself mak ing a perilous living in the slums turned out to be Nirupa Roys sona sava rna by birth to say the least. To all these people ref le c ting reality, I say phooey. Take for your next hero, or at least

patriarch, a member of the Dalit Chamber of Commerce who didnt inh erit his money but made it against the odds. And why is the incomparable Nana Pat e k ar alw ays the anti-hero? Why has Sada s hiv Amrapurkar, since his unforgettable debut in Ardh Satya, been cast as a buffoon? Has there been a dark-skinned heroine in mainstream Hindi cinema besides Smita Patil? These are vexatious questions, and worse than vexatious, like mosquitoes which annoy but can also kill. There are so many apologists for the new Bollywood (a word I loathe, though in its commercial motivations, and its reflection of realities, the comparison with Hollywood is well-founded). Sure, our advertising and our cinema arein terms of sophisticationamong the best in the world. That does not mean they are any good. Going back to names: There is a verse in (I think) a commentary on Manu-Smrti, which details what names are proper to what castes: Sharma and Deva belong to Brahmins; Varma and Traatru to the warriors; Bhuti and Datta denote Vaisyas; and Dasa the Sudras. We have not come a long way in 2,000 years, have we?

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FILED IN: AUTHORS: VIJAY NAMBISAN TAGS: ADVERTISING, ADS | CASTE | DALITS | MOVIES | SKIN COLOUR SECTION: SOCIETY

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Comment Ravan Raj the author is absolutely right. most of these upper caste copy writers are casteist and sexist Reply Like March 13 at 1:47am Nidhi Bansal Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) i guess author is unnecessarily trying to extrapolate the facts. something could be analysed in simple manner.. Reply View 1 more
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You are not logged in, please log in or register If you w ish your letter to be considered for publication in the print magazine, w e request you to use a proper name, w ith full postal address - you could still maintain your anonymity, but please desist from using unpublishable sobriquets and handles

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MAR 25, 2013

Scripsi Not This refers to Vijay Nambisans column The Manuscri pters (Mar 11), where he takes off from a popular ad for Havells fans and launches into a tirade of urban Indias myopia towards the realities of caste. The article proves that Outlook doesnt give its columnists enough time to write their pieces. Poor Mr Nambisan was so engrossed in following the India-Australia match that he ended up submitting thirdrate tripe based on imaginary subtexts.
KRISHNAMURTHI KUMAR, BARODA

The very fact that there still exists a concept in India cal led the 'intercaste' marriage itself demonstrates that we haven't changed. Such marriages also come under the category of 'Special Marriage Act', further proof of their 'peculiarity' and deviation from norm.
GARIMA SINGH YADAV, FARIDABAD

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