On October 18, a massive social media campaign against clothing brand Fabindia was launched by netizens after its Diwali campaign Jashn-e-Riwaaz went viral on social media platforms. National President BJP Yuva Morcha, Tejaswi Surya, also slammed the brand in a tweet where he wrote, “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 Fab India must face economic costs for such deliberate misadventures.”
After the backlash, the brand silently removed all campaign traces from its account on Twitter.
However, by the time we published the report, the campaign was still live on their website, Facebook handle, and its UAE handle on Instagram.
From FabIndia’s Instagram account, the campaign was missing, but the videos and photos related to the campaign were there without mentioning the campaign.
While FabIndia seems to have removed hashtag Jashneriwaaz from the Instagram posts, their creative partners are still using it with a slightly different spelling.
Interestingly, FabIndia has not mentioned the word Diwali or Deepawali even once since November 2020.
In the ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ campaign, the word Diwali was entirely skipped by the brand. The basic idea, it seems, behind the campaign was to make the festival of Hindus a secular one by removing its original name completely.
Jashn-e-Riwaaz by Fabindia is not the first attack on Diwali
Another notable point is that it is not the first time someone has tried to skip the name Diwali while mentioning the festivities. In 2018, The Wire called the festival “Jashn-e-Chiraghan”, which was carried forward even in 2019 (by Outlook) and in 2020 by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor who called it “Jashn-e-Chiraagh” in a post.
Continuous attacks over fireworks and other traditions associated with Diwali have been happening from all directions, including intellectuals, so-called environmentalists, government and judiciary. From calling the festival ‘reason of air pollution’ to denying its due credit for reviving the economy, Diwali has been one of the most favourite targets to demean Sanatan Dharma.