Here’s Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's honest reply for racist advert

Mumbai: Brand ambassador for a leading jewellery store, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was busy attending a jewellery store launch in Chennai. She had no idea how a picture of hers could lead to a thousand words criticism on grave issues like child slavery and racism.

The actress faced flak for promoting racism and child labour for an advert that was published in a newspaper couple of days ago. Having little or no idea of the damage it has caused to the sentiments of her fans, Aishwarya’s publicist had a fitting response to the open letter that has gone viral.

(Photo: Twitter)

In the letter published by Scroll, activists point out the parallels between the ad campaigned by Kalyan Jewellers and 17th and 18th century European portraits in which white aristocrats are tended to by black children in servitude.

(Photo: Scroll.in)

Snippet of the letter:

Dear Mrs Aishwarya Rai Bachchan,

“We write to draw your attention to a full-page advertisement for Kalyan Jewellers in which you feature that appeared in The Hindu (Delhi edition) on April 17, 2015. In the advertisement you appear to be representing aristocracy from a bygone era – bejewelled, poised and relaxing while an obviously underage slave-child, very dark and emaciated, struggles to hold an oversize umbrella over your head.

We wish to convey our dismay at the concept of this advertisement, and that you have, perhaps unthinkingly, associated with such a regressive portrayal of a child to sell a product. While advertisers routinely use fantasy images to sell products, they must surely desist from using images that condone, legitimise, normalise, or build desirable fantasy around slavery or servitude of any kind, including child slavery or child servitude. Further, the extremely fair colour of your skin (as projected in the advertisement) contrasted with the black skin of the slave-boy is obviously a deliberate “creative” juxtaposition by the advertising agency, and insidiously racist.”

However, Aishwarya’s spokesperson has come out in the open claiming that the original picture was nowhere near to what it has been portrayed as.

(Photo: Archana Sadanand Twitter)

“Dear Farah Naqvi, Nisha Agrawal, Enakshi Ganguly , Bharti Ali, Madhu Mehra, Shantha Sinha, Harsh Mander and Mridula Bajaj,

On the onset we would like to thank you on drawing our attention to the observation of the perception of the advertisement. Here is an attachment of the shot taken by somebody during the shoot. The final layout of the ad is entirely the prerogative of the creative team for a brand. However shall forward your article as a viewpoint that can be taken into consideration by the creative team of professional working on the brand visual communication, ” Archana Sadanand wrote on Twitlonger.