Honest Take on the Recent Ad of Manyavar Mohey That Sparked Controversy Against Kanyadaan
The advertisements are now geared towards women’s empowerment. The recent ad of Manyavar starring Alia Bhatt has divided the netizens who find it attacking rituals while some find it empowering.
A few weeks ago, Manyavar Mohey’s wedding couture advertisement with Alia Bhatt dropped, and it created a wave of controversy. It commenced with Kangana Ranaut criticizing the promotion to swindle the naive masses by attacking Hindu customs and traditions.
The digital world has also been divided, some calling it empowering, while it touches their raw nerve of religious sentiments.
The advertisement questions why girls are looked at as someone else’s property (Paraya Dhan). Alia, as the bride portrayed in the ad, cherishes the memories of her family members and candidly questions the patriarchal rituals where women are considered the property of their husbands.
What sparked the controversy was when she questioned the giveaway ritual of Kanyadan, asking whether she was just a mere object of donation. The advertisement takes on the modern twist where her in-laws give away their son, ending with the message that the time now is to ‘respect’ daughters and give both; the bride and the groom an equal sense of the age-old tradition. Instead of Kanyadan, the practice should be towards KanyaMaan.
Since the 90s, Bollywood films have propagated the good girl concept where girls are the burden of their fathers and the property of their husbands. But isn’t marriage about equal partnerships?
However, can we keep out the quotient of ‘empowerment’ from this advertisement aside and just objectively look at the origin of the tradition of whether or not it holds relevance in our scriptures?
After the release of the advertisement, many women priests said that during the Rigvedic age, such traditions were not prevalent. Women could conduct the marriage only with the blessing of their parents. Moreover, the ritual was simply focused on the entry and acceptance of the woman into the ‘Gotra’ of the husband.
Today, India sees a growing hypernationalism where creative freedom has been limited or censored despite promoting peace and empowerment. Hence, the backlash of creative expression and fanaticism is a regular occurrence.
In his book- Why I am a Hindu?, Shashi Tharoor articulately talks about the real meaning of these traditions overshadowed by fanaticism and pop culture distortion.
The Manyavar Mohey ad merely questions women’s position, which has been subdued to patriarchal rituals.
In 2015, when Tanishq released the advertisement of a single mother choosing to remarry, it was called a path-breaking concept. There was no noise even though women marrying more than once is still frowned upon in our society.
The media is the fourth watchdog of our democracy, and advertisements have the soft power to change the nation’s mindset. If radical politicians use the power of this medium to create electoral propaganda, why is an ad promoting the empowerment and respect of women sparking controversy?
Such ads give the women a voice to speak against the regressive norm in their families.
Such shows might not be accessible to women from every stratum, but the Manyavar Ad is a national campaign played on every TV channel of every household. India needs socially conscious advertisements and sparks the conversation of women’s rights and respect at home and in society.
However, the question here is also whether the concept of ‘Kanyadaan’ in itself is regressive or not? Many Hindu ideologists have claimed that the idea of ‘Kanyadaan’ has a different meaning than popularly thought o
The ad, however, is but a beacon of empowerment that pushes us to question gender norms from a nuanced gender lens and get rid of the internalized misogyny present in them.
The media also needs to objectively look at the origin of the rituals before negating them completely.
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