The new Tanishq ad, that shows a Hindu woman being ‘pampered’ with the Hindu ritual of god-bharai by a Muslim mother-in-law, has created quite the furore online. After considerable outrage from the non-Left, who stated, rightly so, that the ad promoted a mythical equation between Hindus and Muslims and ignored ground realities like women being murdered for refusing to convert to Islam post-marriage, the ad was taken down by Tanishq. Thereafter, a battle has now ensued between warring ideological sides and the mythical ‘Hindu-Muslim relationship’ is smack in the middle of it.

While Hindus are outraged because they believe that the ad waters down the violent end that several women meet after they marry Muslim men, unless they convert to Islam, the ‘Liberals’, who often close their eyes to the uncomfortable reality have said that the ad promotes religious harmony and the beauty of interfaith marriages that are increasingly being marred by sectarian hate in the recent times.

There was a common theme in this ad. A common goal. A common thread that connects the rampant delusion – a Hindu girl smack in the middle of it.

Hindu women have been smack in the middle of religious wars for centuries. After Mohammad Bin Qasim defeated Raja Dahir, Hindu women walked to their deaths and committed Jauhar because they feared being captured by the Islamic invader. In 1232, Rajput women committed jauhar instead of submitting to Iltutmish’s army. In 1294, 24,000 women committed Jauhar to escape the sexual slavery that would come with submitted to Alauddin Khilji. One recalls how Rawal Lunakaran slaughtered Rajput women with his own sword when Amir Ali captured the fort. The tales of Rani Padmini’s valour have been sung for decades.

Hindu women were captured once the King fell and were turned into sex slaves by the Islamic invaders. Their honour desecrated, their pride shattered. Hindu women preferred to burn themselves alive because the Islamic invaders did not just stop at taking Hindu women sex slaves and converting them to Islam by the sword or rape, but also violated their mortal remains. As the last act of vengeance against the Kafirs. As the final dishonour. Even in death, Hindu women were converted to Islam by the invaders’ and their army’s last act of rape.

The saga of torturing women by taking them as wives and converting them to Islam was not just a phenomenon of the years gone by.

In recent years, several incidents of love-jihad have been documented. While the ad, and so many Bollywood movies and songs paint a rosy picture of interfaith relationships, in real life, Priya and her little daughter are murdered and buried in their house, Ekta Deshwal gets no warm welcome either, instead, she gets strangulated, beheaded and chopped into pieces. Countless minor girls in Sindh get kidnapped, forcefully converted and married to men twice, even thrice their age.

While the Tanishq ad shows a rosy, happy, rich family where the Hindu daughter in law is loved, cherished and the traditions of her faith respected even celebrated. In reality, Kerala’s Akhila becomes Hadiya, Nimisha becomes Fathima and travels to Afghanistan to become an ISIS terrorist’s wife. The problem is, no feel-good virtue-signalling ad will remember these women. Instead we, the consumers, are fed a fairy tale that is far removed from the reality on the ground.

Several such cases of torture, murder and rape have been documented when women refused to convert to Islam. In fact, this ad surfaced only a couple of days after one 18-year-old boy, Rahul Rajput, was brutally lynched to death by the family of his Muslim girlfriend. 

While Hindu women get tortured, raped and killed for the quest of Muslim men to convert them to Islam, social justice warriors want to further the very narrative that put Hindu women at risk. While the ground reality is far removed from the love-soaked fairy tales that our girls are fed, the violent ends they meet are often pushed under the rug by the very social justice warriors who want to use these women to bring about some mythical change in the society.

Whether it is the mythical goal of Hindu-Muslim unity or the aim of reformists to rightly end caste discrimination, Hindu women are often used as pawns, to be sacrificed at the altar of these social dreams of harmony. The end of tranquillity is sought to be achieved with the sacrifice of Hindu dignity time and time again.

Social Justice warriors want Hindus to be acceptable, unquestioningly so, of Hindu women being married to Muslim men, even when the evidence suggests that more often than not, they might have violent and humiliating ends if the Hindu women refuse their total and utter subjugation at the hand of the Muslim family. They peddle the ‘roti-beti ka rishta’ narrative as if the only way social distances between communities can be bridged is by Hindu families giving up their daughters, willingly or unwillingly.

The burden of secularism is often offloaded on the shoulders of The Hindu community – that is a given. However, it is a mark of our bigotry of low expectations when the smallest gesture by a Muslim is considered the ultimate symbol of peace and harmony. Essentially, just like the burden of proof is far more on the prosecution than the defence, the burden of displaying brotherhood, harmony and ‘ganga-jamuni tehzeeb’ is far more in Hindus, for some odd reason, than it is on Muslims. 

For example, a Muslim mob can run riots and bay for blood after an unflattering post about the Prophet of Islam, but, a video will then be peddled saying that a group of Muslims formed a human chain to protect a temple amidst the violence. Once that video emerges, the sins of the Muslim mob are whitewashed and the narrative changes to just how benevolent and humane the Muslim community really is, that they are willing to risk their lives to save a Hindu temple from the attack. What is lost in the cacophony is just who they are protesting the temple from. 

Similarly, after a Muslim mob had vandalised a temple in Hauz Qazi, a shoddy photoshoot was done to show how Muslims of the area were serving food to the Hindus during a prayer meeting that was organised in the temple. It was later exposed as a complete sham. But that narrative was there nonetheless – look just how benevolent the Muslim community is that they are willing to put aside their differences and feed the Hindus. It doesn’t matter that it was the Muslim community of that area itself that ran riots, desecrated the temple, allegedly even urinated on the idols. What mattered was that after dishonouring the Hindu faith, they participating in a langar.

Now, social justice warriors seem to have gone a step ahead. A Hindu is not secular enough is they do not unquestioningly agree to marry their daughters off to Muslim families. They are not secular enough if they don’t overlook the rampant violence that is unleashed on our daughters, more often than not, when they marry Muslim grooms but have the honour to refuse to convert to Islam. Hindus are not secular enough if they are not willing to close their eyes to their daughters being raped, killed, disrobed and dishonoured. Hindus, to prove their secularism, must be willing to sacrifice their daughter. The light of their lives. The only person who makes their family whole.

The core point is, our daughters are not pawns for anyone’s brand of social activism. No social ideal is righteous enough to justify the brainwashing of our women and girls. The burden of upholding secularism and communal harmony does not rest on the shoulders of our women and their parents alone. Deluded narcissists totally detached from reality should at least have the decency to leave our women alone to boost their own egos.

The most important thing these people must realise is that the age of Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava tomfoolery is over. The age of Hindu assertiveness is upon us. We shall not tolerate garbage one-sided propaganda fed to us. We shall not tolerate the Left brainwashing our daughters into sacrificing their lives to uphold some mythical concept of tolerance and love and brotherhood, the burden of which is solely on the Hindu shoulders.

It is time to realise that all religions do not take different paths to the same goal. Islam wants the annihilation of Kafirs. Hinduism leads one to Moksh. Islam asks for subjugation and conversion of Kafirs. Hinduism leads one to the path of Dharma.

Brands that wish to increase their profit margins should stick to improving the quality of their goods instead of attempting to augment their sales through mindless virtue-signalling.

We are well aware that they are too scared of offending Muslim sensibilities and hence, they restrict their moral sermons to only the tolerant. Punching down might have worked before but it shall work no more. If they do not have the guts to call out the intolerance persistent among significant sections of the Muslim community, then they should refrain from preaching to anyone else, and especially refrain from using Hindu women and girls for it.