The entertainment world moves fast, and Kriti Sanon’s Raksha Bandhan ad row: Is the outrage really about tradition or about what women wear? is the latest development catching everyone's eye. From fans to industry insiders, the reaction has been immediate.
The Story So Far
Add as a preferred source on Google Kriti Sanon probably didn't imagine that tying a rakhi in a jewellery advertisement would result in one of Bollywood's most heated debates of the week. The performer' Raksha Bandhan campaign for GIVA has come under fire from a section of social media users. There are two principal objections.
Kriti is dressed in an off-white bralette-style blouse with a cape and draped skirt, which some viewers believe is inappropriate for a traditional festival. The other objection is to a sequence where she ties a rakhi to her pet dog. Some also questioned the absence of conventional elements such as the puja thali and tilak.
Kriti has not publicly responded to the criticism so far. But beneath the noise around one advertisement lies a more interesting question. Who gets to decide what an Indian woman is supposed to look like while celebrating an Indian festival?
There is certainly a legitimate argument from the other side. This isn't footage from Kriti's private Raksha Bandhan celebration. It is an advertisement created by a brand specifically around a religious-cultural festival.
Audiences are therefore entitled to judge whether its visual language feels authentic to them. A viewer saying, "This doesn't resemble the Raksha Bandhan I know," is expressing an opinion about advertising. Brands routinely succeed or fail depending on whether consumers connect with their interpretation of culture.
That criticism shouldn't automatically be dismissed as regressive. But somewhere between questioning the creative choices of the campaign and scrutinising how much of Kriti Sanon's body should be visible while sitting next to a man playing her brother, the conversation changes entirely. It stops being about Raksha Bandhan.
It becomes about policing the woman celebrating it. And therein lies Bollywood's peculiar contradiction. Audiences routinely watch actresses in bikinis, swimsuits, plunging gowns, item songs and intimate moments.
Those images are consumed, revealed, celebrated and sometimes turned into trending clips. Yet put a modern outfit inside the visual grammar of a festival and suddenly the same female body becomes a cultural question. Perhaps because Indian popular culture still places women in two oddly separate boxes.
There is the modern woman of captures, fashion captures, holidays and Instagram. And then there is the supposedly different woman who enters the frame during Diwali, Raksha Bandhan, Karwa Chauth or a wedding. The second woman is expected to visually signal tradition.
We have become comfortable with modernity, provided it changes clothes before entering the festival. There is another interesting layer to the controversy. The decision to include the dog wasn't an accidental gag.
GIVA had already described its Raksha Bandhan initiative as Furever Sibling, built around the idea that pets have become family members for many contemporary households. The company also linked the campaign to a pet box office haul. In oth…
Whether this marks the beginning of something bigger or a standalone moment remains to be seen. What is clear is that the entertainment world is watching closely — and so are we. Follow TeraMovies for complete coverage.
