#145 The Escalation Ladder of Outrage

India Policy Watch #1: What Outrage Means&#160;<br/><br/>Insights on burning policy issues in India<br/><br/>&#8212; RSJ<br/><br/>Last week while writing about the Fabindia Diwali ad and the accompanying outrage, I wrote that this &#8216;arms race of purity&#8217; might become a familiar feature in our cultural landscape. This week <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/dabur-withdraws-ad-on-karwachauth-tenders-unconditionally-apology-121102600886_1.html">we got this</a>:<br/><br/>&#8220;Homegrown FMCG player <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/topic/dabur">Dabur </a>has withdrawn its advertisement on Karva Chauth showing a lesbian couple celebrating the festival in the ad campaign of its Fem Creme bleach and has issued unconditionally apology.<br/><br/>After facing backlash on social media platforms and also from a politician from the ruling BJP, the company has withdrawn the ad campaign.<br/><br/>In the same week, Bajrang Dal activists vandalised the set and assaulted the director and crew members of the web series Aashram because it &#8216;defamed the Hindu religion&#8217;. <br/><br/>There are a few larger questions I have about this phenomenon. Before I come to them, let&#8217;s look at this Dabur ad issue a bit more. The ad uses the classic &#8220;traditional plot with a twist&#8221; approach to make it stand out amidst the clutter. A karwa chauth ad with a lesbian couple must have checked all the boxes in the minds of the marketers at Dabur. It was topical and it celebrated diversity. The recent Cadbury&#8217;s Dairy Milk campaign that went viral where it switched the gender roles of its classic ads of the 90s is a good example of this approach. The new ad had the girl hitting a last-ball six while her boyfriend danced onto the pitch. <br/><br/>So, here&#8217;s a thought experiment: what if Cadbury&#8217;s had made the same ad with a same-sex couple? Would that have created the same outrage as the Dabur karwa chauth ad? I suspect there would have been some but nothing of t