The apparel makers used the phrase ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ to describe their new collection on the microblogging platform, Twitter. The post had the image of men and women all wearing red-coloured ethnic clothes.
Famous ethnic wear brand FabIndia pulled down its collection titled ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ on Monday after #boycottFabIndia started to trend on Twitter. FabIndia had tweeted about their collection collection ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ on October 9, with the post, “As we welcome the festival of love and light, Jashn-e-Riwaaz, by FabIndia is a collection that beautifully pays homage to Indian culture…”. The post had the image of men and women all wearing the ethnic clothes in the colour red.
FabIndia removed the tweet and pulled down the advertisement, following an uproar by Twitter users accusing FabIndia of dampening the Hindu festival of Diwali. Among those who raised strong objections to FabIndia’s advertisement was BJP Yuva Morcha President Tejasvi Surya, who tweeted, “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.”
Many Twitter users said that a simple Diwali wish would have been good enough to promote the brand. Some felt that it was absolutely unnecessary to deconstruct a Hindu festival just to promote secularism and Muslim ideologies.
Uttarakhand MLA Rajkumar, from the BJP, also issued a tweet along similar lines, “Deepavali is not Jash-e-Riwaaz…Period!!! Seems like Fab India has done this deliberately to hurt Hindu Sentiment. #BoycottFabIndia”, wrote Rajkumar, who attached a screenshot of the original FabIndia post.
Shortly after the uproar, a video, where people were seen using FabIndia kurta as a cleaning cloth, also went viral.
FabIndia is not the only brand which had to pull down its advertisement after a Twitter uproar. There have been other brands in the past such as Tanishq, which was trolled for promoting inter-faith marriages through its advertisement. Manyavar, another clothing brand faced #boycottmanyavar, when a new advertisement starring Alia Bhatt addressed the tradition of ‘Kanyadaan’ in Hindu weddings.
A company spokesperson was quoted by the Times of India as saying, “Our Diwali collection, called “Jhilmil si Diwali” is yet to be launched. We at Fabindia have always stood for celebration of India with its myriad traditions in all hues. In fact, ‘Fabindia – Celebrate India’ is our tagline and also a wordmark. Our current capsule of products under the name Jashn-e-Riwaaz is a celebration of Indian traditions. The phrase means that, literally,”