Nadja-Christina Schneider

Tea for Interreligious Harmony?
Cause Marketing as a New Fieldof Experimentation with
Visual Secularity in India

Working Paper #20

Working Paper Series of the HCAS
“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”#20: Nadja-Christina Schneider. “Tea for Interreligious Harmony? Cause Marketing as a
New Field of Experimentation with Visual Secularity in India.”Leipzig University, 2020.
© Nadja-Christina Schneider
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Please cite as:
Schneider, Nadja-Christina. “Tea for Interreligious Harmony? Cause Marketing asa New Field of Experimentation with Visual Secularity in India.” Working Paper
Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”
20. Leipzig University, 2020.

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Contents
1 Introduction...................................................................................................3
2 Cause Marketing, Social Advertising and the ‘Harmonizing’Role of Tea......................................................................................................8
3 Visual Mediations of Secularity in Cause Marketing Campaigns........15
4 Conclusion...................................................................................................26
5 Bibliography.................................................................................................29

1

Tea for Interreligious Harmony?

Cause Marketing as a New Field of Experimentation with
Visual Secularity in India
1 Introduction
This working paper is part of a larger research project on emerging visualities and imaginaries of living together in plurality and on equal terms.
Against the background of growing majoritarianism in India and the normalization of violence against religious minorities and marginalized communities, the search for new visual forms and aesthetic means to counterincreasing divisiveness and conflict has acquired exceptional urgency. It isa search pursued by many and in multiple directions, occasionally even in
the realm of marketing and advertising which is the focus of this article.
The larger project considers documentaries, fictional films and transmedia
interventions in order to understand how different actors seek to create
new visualities that are markedly different from earlier form(at)s used tovisually mediate the normative project of political secularism for many decades, but nevertheless draw on the idea that secularity is a mode of living
together and socially interacting in plural societies.
In their article “Multiple Secularities: Toward a Cultural Sociology ofSecular Modernities,” Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Marian Burchardt distinguish between four forms of secularity.1 Of these, the authors argue thatthe second form – that which is established “for the sake of balancing/pacifying religious diversity” – is especially strong in independent India.2
While different notions of secularity (addressing individual freedom, national unity, and the independence of the political domain) were still on
the agenda at the time of the Constituent Assembly, Wohlrab-Sahr andBurchardt argue that today, the “idea of accommodating religious diversity
1

2

The four forms are: 1) secularity for the sake of individual rights and liberties; 2) secularity for the sake of balancing/pacifying religious diversity; 3) secularity for the sakeof societal/national integration and development; and 4) secularity for the sake of the
independent development of functional domains of society. Monika Wohlrab-Sahrand Marian Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities: Towards a Cultural Sociology of SecularModernities,” Comparative Sociology 11, no. 6 (2012): 889.
Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities,” 896.
3

as key to Indian secularity holds for both critics and advocates.”3 The shift
towards a concept of secularity for the sake of managing religious diversity
in India became more apparent in the 1980s and 90s. The development
was particularly influenced by the decline of state secularism as the basis
for national identity and the ascendancy of the majoritarian religious nationalist narrative at the time.4 Nevertheless, the predominance of one typeof secularity does not mean that “other types of secularity are not presentor might not gain importance in the future.”5 Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt
also draw our attention to the lack of research on “everyday perspectives
and the culturally saturated imaginaries of social groups,” which implies
that “cultures of secularity” are hardly addressed or often taken as mereeffects of state policy.6 If one were really to “collect accounts of lived experiences of millions of Indians,” however, it is highly probable, according to
Shylashri Shankar, that ethnographies of multiple social imaginaries would“include, among others, the state’s social imaginary constructed by a constitution and interpreted by the courts, religious leaders’ social imaginary
disseminated through preaching and lectures and practices adopted by followers, the lived experiences of different types of ordinary people, and theimaginaries of political leaders displayed through their election manifestoes [sic] and speeches and subscribed by those who vote for them.”7
Drawing on Alev Çinar, Srirupa Roy and Maha Yahya’s theoretical reflections on the centrality of the ‘mediatic’ public domain (and the publiccirculation of images in particular) to the secular-religious relationship,
one might deem it necessary to include the important role of (visual) media and technologically mediated communication in any discussion on
multiple imaginaries in increasingly media-saturated societies. As the authors state, non-state actors and privately owned media “have played a central role in elaborating and consolidating normative public imaginations of
the secular,” and ‘secularism as a norm’ has been negotiated, subverted or
3
4
5
6
7

Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, 898.
See Sumantra Bose, Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 117–158.
Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities,” 892.
Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, 884.
Shylashri Shankar, “Secularity and Hinduism’s Imaginaries in India,” in A Secular Age
Beyond the West: Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa,
ed. Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 133–34.
4

contested with the public circulation of images since the 1980s.8 However,
the role of advertising (commercial as well as non-commercial) as a central
and ubiquitous visual medium which operates across various platforms,
multiple channels and interconnected spaces – television, social media,
newspapers or public billboards in urban spaces, among others – has rarely
been looked at in the study of secularity in India.
My interest in the role of advertising is based on the following observation: Precisely at a time when political secularism is seen to be in a deep
crisis in India, a number of multinational corporations, national companies and advertising agencies seem determined to intervene in the highlypolarized debate and to experiment with new ways of – literally – ‘seeing’and ‘feeling’ secularity in India. But instead of contributing to a ‘rehabilitation’ of political secularism,9 they seem to be primarily concerned with thestrengthening or revitalization of what Sudipta Kaviraj calls ethical secularity. In the Indian context, Kaviraj argues that the concept of ethical secularity (he also uses the term ‘ethical secularism’ in the same article) refers to “astructure of beliefs which involved the derivation of the fundamental basisof moral conduct from human sources, not from the divine.”10 In contrast
to this, the term political secularism refers to the principles through which
political authorities sought to achieve mutual accommodation between
potentially hostile religious communities.11 This definition seems to correspond, at least partially, to the second form or guiding idea of secularity as
described by Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt.
For the framework of this paper, I focus specifically on a small, buthighly visible body of recently circulated cause marketing campaigns. I
show that these campaigns introduce or mediate an understanding of secularity as care for and connectedness with adherents of other religions. It is
worth noting that some of the campaigns employ the communicative spaceof (Hindu) religious festivals, such as Holi or Ganesh Chaturthi. Previously,
religious festivals were primarily portrayed as family events in product or
Alev Çinar, Srirupa Roy, and Maha Yahya, Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt,
Lebanon, Turkey, India (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 14–15.
9 Rajeev Bhargava, “Rehabilitating Secularism,” in Rethinking Secularism, ed. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Vanantwerpen (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 94.
10 Sudipta Kaviraj, “Languages of Secularity,” Economic and Political Weekly 48, no. 50(2013): 100.
11 Kaviraj, “Languages of Secularity.”
85

brand advertising in India.12 In the clips that I would like to discuss, thefocus is shifted onto the social interaction between individual membersof different religious communities. According to Joseph Kupfer, the locus
classicus for discussions of care are the everyday spheres of intimacy –friendship and family.13 However, he argues thatan ethics of care must go beyond family and friendship to investigate theplace of the individual in the larger community. After all [...] we do not live
exclusively in the company of those with whom we share intimacies and apersonal history. Participating in school, neighborhood, and town is essential to personal growth.14

The cause marketing campaigns that I consider in this paper aim to engage viewers in an ongoing relationship with the imagined religious ‘other’that is informed by the basic features of care ethics: attentiveness, responsiveness and a sympathetic imagination or ability to empathize with theother person.15 Recent discussions on the role of peace communication,
and, particularly, on the potential contribution of post-conflict cinema tosocietal dialogue and reconciliation, demonstrate how an ethics of care canbe extended beyond family and friends, to the country, nation state andbeyond. In the last three decades, India has witnessed a series of criticalevents and a sharp rise in violence against caste and religious minorities.
In response to this, a large number of filmmakers, artists and activists have
deployed various visual forms to create new platforms and public spaces
for peace communication. Advertising can be regarded as an interesting
newcomer in this area. Because of their work, the filmmakers, artists andactivists have become targets of censorship, dangerous speech and violence– by both the state and the supporters and extended media networks ofright-wing and Hindu nationalist groups.
Cause marketing campaigns consciously work to produce very strong
emotional or affective reactions in the millions of people who watch them.
They often polarize too, as we have seen with a number of highly successful
global cause marketing campaigns since the early 2000s. For instance, the
12 See Nadja-Christina Schneider, “Media Culture, Advertising and Consumerism in India,”in Rising India – Europe’s Partner?, ed. Klaus Voll and Doreen Beierlein (Berlin: Weißensee Verlag, 2006).
13 Joseph H. Kupfer, Feminist Ethics in Film: Reconfiguring Care through Cinema (Bristol:
intellect, 2012).
14 Kupfer, Feminist Ethics in Film, 9.
15 Kupfer, 98.
6

Dove campaign for “Real Beauty” launched in 2004 or, more recently, thecontroversial Gillette campaign “The Best a Man Can Be” (2019). Whether
companies now consider the risk of negative publicity, polarized reactions,and phenomena such as YouTube dislike mobs or internet trolls in theirmarketing strategies, is an interesting discussion in itself. What is evident isthat cause marketing definitely entails risks for companies, as well as for the
non-profit organizations who sometimes cooperate with them, and hence
require the resources to deal with the potential financial or reputationalrisks. The cause marketing campaigns in focus here have been watched bymillions in India and received strong audience reactions – both positive
and negative. This paper is not concerned with whether cause marketingor social advertising can be seen as a credible or effective medium. Instead,it aims to achieve an understanding of the aesthetic choices, motivations
and especially the notions of secularity that are visually elaborated and mediated. It also considers what motivates individual advertisers and companies to intervene in the highly politicized debate about religious plurality
in India, and to experiment with different ideas of secularity – given theconstant risk of boycott calls, internet trolling and the public burning ofbrand products.
The second part of this paper briefly introduces the concept of cause marketing and contextualizes it within the recent development of advertisingin India. The third part contains a more detailed discussion of two particularly interesting campaigns which seem to suggest that individuals do
not depend on the state to manage or accommodate religious diversity inIndia and are independently capable of creating a new basis for peacefulrelationships. While the companies and advertising agencies may have had
similar ideas and intentions about the positive message and shared notion
they wanted to convey, it is interesting to see that they nevertheless seem todraw on rather different concepts of secularity. The first campaign, “#Rang
Laaye Sang” (“Colors bring us together,” Surf Excel, 2019), reproduces, atleast to a certain extent and perhaps unintentionally, what Srirupa Roy
calls the minoritizing bent16 of political secularism, as will be illustrated
below. In contrast to this, the second campaign, “#Shree Ganesh Apnepan
Ka,” is clearly more concerned with a revitalization of or establishing a new
16 Srirupa Roy, “Temple and dam, fez and hat: the secular roots of religious politics in India
and Turkey,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 48, no. 2 (2010): 156.
7

basis for ethical secularity. As will be discussed below, this clip also seems
to be inspired by recent attempts by Indian filmmakers, scholars and media
activists to spread bhakti philosophical ideas, and, in particular, the poetic
work of 15th-century saint-poet Kabir17, as a way of countering the hegemonic tendencies of Hindu nationalism. What the two selected campaigns
do seem to have in common is the understanding that mutual recognitionis as important for the adherent of another religion as it is for oneself. I willconsider the extent to which these and other campaigns with similar intentions depart from earlier mediations of normative public imaginationsof the secular and engage with different ideas and forms of secularity thathave hitherto rarely been discussed in India.

2 Cause Marketing, Social Advertising and the ‘Harmonizing’Role of Tea
Cause marketing is based on the assumption that especially middle-classconsumers worldwide have become more aware of the inequality surrounding them and increasingly want to ‘make a difference.’ Several recent
market research surveys in countries as diverse as the US, Germany andIndia seem to corroborate this trend. Accordingly, the central idea of cause
17 Bhakti poetry was originally oral. Its form varies from region to region, and has also
varied over time. Martin Fuchs argues that the “poems and songs bring out the very
different modes of bhaktas’ experiences of God and allow for articulating alternative (social) imaginaries.” Martin Fuchs, “Indian Imbroglios: Bhakti Neglected, Or: The Missed
Opportunity for a New Approach to a Comparative Analysis of Civilizational Diversity,”in Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis: Eurasian Explorations, ed. Johann P. Arnason and Chris Hann (New York, NY: SUNY Press, 2018), 131. Kabir, “whose fame has
spread, and endured until today” is considered one of the most outspoken religious andsocial critics (Fuchs, “Indian Imbroglios,” 131). The Kabir Project which was initiated bydocumentary filmmaker Shabnam Virmani and started as a response to the anti-Muslim
pogroms in the West Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, uses the personal formless (nirguna)Ram of Kabir as a counter-image to the increasingly militant form of Ram which is at
the center of Hindu nationalist mobilizations and the ideology of Hindutva. It should be
mentioned in this context, however, that it is very difficult to identify authentic verses by
Kabir among the work which today is ascribed to him. The historical Kabir has been obscured by the long history of his influence (“Wirkungsgeschichte”), as Michael Bergunder puts it. Michael Bergunder, “Religionsvergleich in der nordindischen Nirguna-Bhakti
des 15.–17. Jahrhunderts? Die Sant-Tradition und ihre Vorstellung von ‘Hindus’ und‘Muslimen’, ” in Religion in Asien? Studien zur Anwendbarkeit des Religionsbegriffs, ed. Peter Schalk et al. (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2013), 47.
8

marketing refers to aligning a brand with a cause to produce profitable andsocietal benefits for both. These mutual benefits can include the creation ofsocial value, increased connection with the public, and the communicationof shared value, as well as profit of course. One look at discussions andrankings of campaigns that were supposedly very successful in the last two
decades reveals that they primarily address gender, health or environmental issues. Large-scale cause marketing campaigns gained momentum with
Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign (released in 2004), and the technique is
now a global phenomenon. The Dove campaign included advertisements,
videos, workshops, publications and many other events; its declared aim
was to enhance women’s self-esteem and confidence in their bodies. Doveis one of the 400 or more brands owned by Unilever, one of the oldest
multinational companies, whose products are currently available in 190
countries. To this day, the Dove campaign is seen as the most successful
example of cause marketing despite the fact that the company also faced
fierce criticism for its ‘double standards’ given that skin-lightening products sold under the brand of Fair & Lovely in many countries in Africa andAsia generate enormous financial profits for Unilever.18 Nevertheless, thenegative publicity is said to have been far outweighed by the notion that theDove “Real Beauty” campaign had a very positive long-term effect on girls
and women worldwide, and that it created more awareness in the beauty
industry.
Although experiments in combining brand advertising and social messages have become a global phenomenon, India seems to be a particularlyinteresting testing ground for new approaches in the field of advertisingand social campaigns. While in countries like Germany, advertising in
general and social advertising or corporate social responsibility campaigns
in particular are often viewed with suspicion, the role that advertisingcan play in creating awareness seems to be taken more seriously in India, as is the self-representation of CEOs and companies as contributing
to or even shaping social change. Furthermore, many young advertisersin cities like Delhi or Mumbai, who were born in the 1980s or 1990s – theso-called post-liberalization generation – confidently position themselves
18 For a in-depth critical discussion, see Bellinda Widmann Kambili, Hindustan Unilever
Limited skin-lightening brand ‘Fair and Lovely’: (New) tie-up of Gender, Social Entrepreneurship and Global Marketing in Advertisement (unpublished Bachelor thesis, HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin, Institute for Asian and African Studies, 2017).
9as changemakers who possess the skills and means to make a meaningful impact on society.19 A very good example to illustrate this is perhaps
the Vicks “#Touch Of Care” campaign (2017) which has the word ‘care’
explicitly in its title. The campaign questions existing assumptions about
biological motherhood, femininity, and heteronormative constructions offamily. It poses the question: If you raise a child, care for it like a parent andsee yourself as a mother, shouldn’t you be able to acquire the legal status ofa mother of that child too, irrespective of your gender and sexual identity,
marital status or genetic relationship with the child? The role of the mother in this advertisement is played by transgender activist Gauri Sawant
who had been campaigning for a long time in India for the recognition
that motherhood goes beyond gender. What the Vicks “#Touch of Care”
campaign did very successfully was to engage the viewers emotionally andto activate their ability to see the ‘other’ person differently, in this case atransgender mother from a highly marginalized community, and to feelwith them – a key requisite for the social acceptance, normalization and,eventually, also the legal recognition of transgender motherhood in India.
Big advertising agencies also regularly produce public service campaigns for the government or non-profit campaigns for NGOs. This hashelped establish the idea that advertising can be a powerful medium formass education and development-oriented communication. Such campaigns are even more powerful when popular celebrities such as iconic actor Amitabh Bachchan endorse campaigns dedicated to health awarenessor better education for girls.

19 Specifically focusing on social as well as product advertising in the post-Nirbhaya or -Delhi
Gang Rape context since 2013, Mette Gabler (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) observes in
her PhD research that young advertisers often see themselves as ‘changemakers’ and wish
to actively contribute to a wider recognition of and support for gender diversity and gender equality.
10

A polio-eradication campaign ad featuring Amitabh Bachchan. Picture courtesy: Quora.20

However, the brand name which can be said to have introduced an unprecedented dynamic to the field of social advertising and cause marketing in India
is Tata Tea. The company’s “Jaago Re – Wake Up” brand campaign, launchedin 2007, very successfully took on issues such as voter registration and electoral participation, corruption and women’s rights and empowerment. The
campaign’s success can be measured both in terms of the reach of ideas and increase in sales of Tata Tea. As Sanjiv Sarin (currently Regional President, South
Asia Tata Global Beverages), puts it in his famous quote:While tea may wake you up, Tata Tea awakens you. The campaign demonstrated Tata Tea’s thought leadership in positioning tea as a medium of ‘social awakening’ and not just ‘physical awakening.’21

While advertising agencies always played a key role in the ‘animation’ of
the state’s postcolonial rhetoric of national progress, development and aspiration through their visuals and slogans,22 it is very interesting to note
how some of the most successful and visible CEOs now also seem to be
keen to appropriate a statesman-like role for themselves, as they make20 See Somya Abrol, “#WorldPolioDay: How Amitabh Bachchan drove India to become poliofree: The actor’s efforts in eradicating polio are what drove the country to a polio-free
future,” India Today, October 24, 2017, https://www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/health/story/amitabh-bachchan-world-polio-day-eradication-india-virus-pulse-polio-bill-gateslifest-1070241-2017-10-24.
21 Nilofer D’Souza, “Tata Tea: Champion of Cause Marketing,” Forbes India, December 6,
2012, http://www.forbesindia.com/printcontent/34249.
22 See Nandini Gooptu and Rangan Chakravarty, “Imagi-Nation: The Media, Nation and
Politics in Contemporary India,” in Cultural Encounters: Communicating Otherness, ed.
Brian Street and Elizabeth Hallam (London: Routledge, 2000).
11

increasing use of the political rhetoric of national development, progress and23
integration in their companies’ mission statements and public speeches.
In view of the hugely successful “Jaago Re” campaign, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) had to come up with an innovative brand campaign for Brook
Bond Red Label Tea, Tata Tea’s largest competitor in India. Accordingly, in
2014, Hindustan Unilever adopted a new framework and slogan for their
new cause marketing campaign titled “Swaad Apnepan Ka” which roughly translates as the flavor or taste of togetherness, but apnapan (Hindi:अपनापन) also means familiarity or kinship in Hindi. Tea and its perceived
ability to diffuse tension, to bring people, not just families, but neighbors
and even strangers, closer together, provides the backdrop and overarching idea of this cause marketing campaign. Referring to the film Gandhi(1982), directed by Richard Attenborough, Joseph Kupfer argues that it isGandhi’s character which embodies the care perspective at the level of thenation state in India:
The notion that all Indians are connected, their welfare entwined, is a familial one, evoking the care ethics on the personal level but applying itin the public sphere of politics. Later, Gandhi makes the family metaphor
explicit, saying that Hindus and Muslims are all born of mother India. As
if to underscore Gandhi’s perspective of care, he is addressed with familial
affection as Bapu or father by those close to him.24

This Gandhian notion of connectedness, instead of the post-independent
state’s motto of “unity in diversity,” may have influenced the advertisers
who conceptualized the new “Swaad Apnepan Ka” cause marketing campaign for Brook Bond Red Label Tea in 2014.25 For every individual video
ad in the campaign, a different social or political issue is carefully selected
23 Two key examples are Sanjiv Mehta, CEO and Managing Director of Hindustan Unilever
Ltd., and Sanjiv Sarin, currently CEO and Managing Director of Tata Coffee.
24 Kupfer, Feminist Ethics in Film, 98.
25 It is perhaps no coincidence that a fictionalized Gandhi has also reappeared on screen recently, especially in a number of highly successful Hindi movies, as a fatherly figure who
is capable of providing a new philosophical and moral compass to a seemingly confusedsociety. In contemporary visual art too, Gandhi’s ‘fatherly body’ and role as a father figure
to the nation, has been a focus for many artists of late, as Sumathi Ramaswamy argues.
Interesting comparative research on the visualiziation of the two iconic ‘fatherly bodies’of Mao and Gandhi has been jointly conducted by Sumathi Ramaswamy and Barbara
Mittler: Sumathi Ramaswamy and Barbara Mittler, “No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies
of Gandhi and Mao” (lecture series, exhibition “Envisioning Asia: Gandhi and Mao in
the Photographs of Walter Bosshard,” Heidelberg, May 2019), http://www.asia-europe.
uni-heidelberg.de/en/newsevents/events/exhibition-envisioning-asia/program.html.
12and focused on. As such, the campaign is always about embracing a larger
agenda and thus sometimes poses a risk to the company, especially in times
of social media and very powerful digital networks of outrage in India as
well as beyond. Some audiences may feel offended by or dislike the content
and message; they may try to create a negative perception or even call fora boycott, as has actually happened with the two recent campaigns which
will be discussed in the third part of this paper.
Love thy Neighbors

The first ‘socially inclusive’ advertisement in the “Swaad Apnepan Ka”
campaign was simply titled “Neighbors” (2014). In the advertisement, an
initially hesitant Hindu couple who have been locked out of their apartment are invited for a cup of tea by their hijab-wearing Muslim neighborand her little daughter, who is also wearing a hijab. It is immediately clear
that, despite the fact that they live next door to them, the Hindu couple
hardly know the Muslim family. When the Muslim woman greets themsmilingly, the Hindu couple’s facial expressions are rather stiff and theirbody language conveys the distance they want or think they need to maintain between the families, even though they are in an awkward situation
without their key, and the first thing one might think of in such a situation
would be to ask the neighbors for help. Despite the welcoming and extremely friendly invitation to come into their apartment until help arrives,
it is not her warm hospitality but only the smell of tea, and obviously exactly their favorite brand and way of preparing it (including the right selection
and amount of spices), which makes them change their minds. However,
all this seems to be quickly forgotten when they finally sit together in theneat and clean living room of their Muslim neighbor’s apartment and enjoy
several cups of tea together, sharing a conversation in which their respective religious adherence does not seem to matter any longer. While it isinteresting to note that the black hijab clearly marks her as ‘religious’ ormore precisely, as a member of a religious minority, her representation inthis short clip very consciously avoids any of the stereotypical images andassociations which are very dominant in Indian mainstream media.26
26 As opinion polls and studies have recurrently revealed, most non-Muslims attribute Muslim women’s low status to discriminatory treatment under India’s Muslim personal law, as
well as to Islam itself. According to this perception and representation, Islam suppresses
13Stills from “Swaad Apnepan Ka: Neighbors,” Brooke Bond Red Label India, 2014.

women to a greater extent than other religions do. Muslim women, compared to womenof other religions, are most often perceived as submissive, reserved, fragile, and, due totheir social conditioning, unable to fight for their own rights. See Sabina Kidwai, Images ofMuslim Women: A Study on the Representation of Muslim Women in the Media (New Delhi:
WISCOMP, 2003).
14

Another much-debated video ad in the “Swaad Apnepan Ka” campaign was
titled “Surprise Visit” (2015). It focused on the sensitive topic of unmarried couples living together.27 In 2016, the company launched an awardwinning campaign on the transgender community in India. With the“#Shri Ganesh Apnepan Ka” campaign (2018), Brooke Bond Red Label Tea
for the first time ventured into the theme of interreligious encounters in
the context of an event which is primarily associated with Hinduism. Thisclip will be discussed in the next part of this paper.

3 Visual Mediations of Secularity in Cause Marketing Campaigns
In August 2018, the Law Commission of India stated that a uniform civil
code was “neither necessary nor desirable at this stage.”28 The establishmentof a uniform civil code, replacing the existing religion-based personal laws,
is part of a Directive Principle in the Indian Constitution and a fierce debate
about this issue has been ongoing for many decades now.29 Former Supreme
Court judge B.S. Chauhan who led the Law Commission, said in the samestatement that “the term secularism has meaning only if it assures the expression of any form of difference and that this diversity, both religious andregional, should not get subsumed under the louder voice of the majority.”
However, the statement also stressed the importance of reforming and codifying “all personal laws so that prejudices and stereotypes in every one ofthem would come to light and could be tested on the anvil of fundamental
27 For a detailed discussion of this and other media campaigns on cohabitation, see FritziMarie Titzmann, “Contesting the Norm? Live-in Relationships in Indian Media Discourses,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal [Online] 16 (2017).
28 Krishnadas Rajagopal, “Uniform civil code neither necessary nor desirable at this stage,
says Law Commission,” The Hindu, August 31, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/news/
national/uniform-civil-code-neither-desirable-nor-necessary-at-this-stage-says-lawcommission/article24833363.ece. Hindu nationalists in particular assert that Muslims’
adherence to a separate, religion-based family law demonstrates that they are ‘backward’and ‘not willing to integrate’ into the national community. They hold that only a ‘secular’
uniform civil code – in lieu of the religion-based personal or family laws – would bringabout the desired national integration of Muslims into Indian society. Despite recurring
demands for a uniform civil code, it is not clear what such a code would actually look
like. See Nadja-Christina Schneider, “Law: Modern: Family,” in Encyclopedia of Women& Islamic Cultures, ed. Joseph Suad (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
29 According to Article 44 (Directive principles of state policy) of the Indian constitution,“the State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the
territory of India.”15

rights of the Constitution.”30 While this upholds the notion of secularity ‘forthe sake of balancing or pacifying religious diversity’ (i.e. the second formof secularity in Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt’s model), it can also be read as
an attempt to reconcile the idea of freedom of religious communities with
the idea of a liberal-democratic state striving for societal progress, national
integration, gender equality and individual freedom (i.e. the first and thirdforms of secularity outlined by Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt).31
Nevertheless, by explicitly cautioning against “the louder voice of the
majority,” which threatens religious or regional difference, the Law Commission also reconfirms what Srirupa Roy calls the minoritizing bent ofsecularism in India or “the ways in which the success of secularism wastied to the existence of religious minorities as minorities,”32 while simultaneously affirming the secular state’s task of “reforming and rationalizing
the majority religion of Hinduism.”33 As Roy argues, (political) secularism
could be claimed as the fulfillment of the state’s commitment to the representative principle only if there was a manifest need or demand for religious
representation; the continued public visibility of religious minorities who
felt ‘at home’ was actually required, because “[...] to the extent that religion
grew less salient in the constitution of identity and interests, so did secularism.”34 At the same time, the secular insistence on minority difference“worked to constitute Hindu identity as the unmarked centre of Indianness against which the difference of other religions could be contrasted,
as the permanent majority that was already, and safely ‘at home’. ”35 An almost paradigmatic visualization of this minoritizing bent can be foundin an advertisement for Surf Excel detergent, which was released shortly before Holi (the festival of colors) in February 2019. The one-minutelong advertisement, titled “Rang Laaye Sang” (Colors Bring us Together),
30 Rajagopal, “Uniform civil code.”
31 In view of the widespread notion that the codified Hindu family law needs no further
reform or amendment, it is important that the Law Commission referred to all existing
personal laws. As the Hindu Code is applied not only to Hindus, but also to membersof the Sikh, Buddhist, and Jain communities, women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes argues
for an examination of whether the codified Hindu law has actually helped to bring aboutsocial transformation and change gender relationships. Flavia Agnes, “Has the codified
Hindu law changed gender relationships?,” Social Change 46, no. 4 (2016): 611.
32 Roy, “Temple and dam,” 156.
33 Roy, 153.
34 Roy, 155–56.
35 Roy, 155.
16

features two children, a girl and an – evidently religious – Muslim boy.
While all the other children in the clip are wearing non-traditional clothing (and are hence not visually marked as Hindu or religious), the boy is
wearing a shalwar kameez and taqiyah (prayer cap). In the clip, the girlencourages the other children to throw balloons filled with colored waterat her. She does this until the children have run out of balloons, which ensures that her Muslim friend can attend the nearby mosque to offer namaaz
without ruining his white clothes. The clip ends with a female voice telling
us that stains are good if you get them while doing good: “Agar kuch achhakarne mein daag lag jaaye, toh daag achhe hain.”

Still from the clip “#RangLaayeSang”, Surf Excel, 2019.

The Surf Excel clip immediately received a lot of attention and was circulated across various media platforms. Many journalists, bloggers andtwitter users were quick to comment on the advertisement, appreciating
its positive message of togetherness and communal harmony, and the factthat it reminds audiences in India of how the festival of colors can bringpeople from different religious backgrounds together and thus conveys abeautiful message about the ‘true essence of India’, which lies in its ‘unity indiversity.’ Several marketing experts were also invited to share their viewson the campaign and explained, for instance, that[i]t is not always about selling the product. The brand [Surf Excel, a Hindustan Unilever brand – author’s note] has moved away from comparing
17

themselves to other detergent brands. The old approach was very productled, the age of selling a product that way has completely gone away. Whatbrands are trying to do is helping the customer buy a product by attaching agood social message with it. [...] This ad film is a great one that touches upon
the theme of religion [...] and it leaves the audience with a good message.36

However, as could be expected given the present political climate andcontext of digitally mediated communication, a backlash against the advertising campaign soon also gained momentum. On social media, there
were calls to boycott both the product and the ‘foreign’ company which was“shoving one-sided secularism down our throat [sic].”

This photo montage from the “#boycotthindustanunilever” campaign was widely
circulated on the internet in spring 2019.

Reactions to the advertisement quickly became so polarized that a morenuanced, not to mention critical discussion of its content was close to impossible, or so it seemed, as negative reactions were quickly associated with‘Hindutva bigots’ or ‘Hindu ethnonationalists.’ As briefly mentioned in the
introduction to this paper, Çinar, Roy and Yahya draw our attention to thestriking convergence between “state and non-state visual elaborations of
the secular-religious relationship:”

36 N Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research, quoted in: Noel D’Souza, “#RangLaayeSang goes
well with Surf Excel’s core philosophy: Carlos Pereira, Lowe Lintas,” exchange4media.com,
March 7, 2019, https://www.exchange4media.com/advertising-news/ranglaayesangh-goeswell-with-surf-excels-core-philosophy-carlos-pereira-lowe-lintas-95156.html.
18

In the private media landscape, as in the official or statist ideology, theconstitutive relationship between secularism and religion – the fact that
representations of secularism seem to require the constant representationof ‘religion’ – emerges as a dominant theme.37

The aforementioned minoritizing bent of Indian secularism described by
Srirupa Roy is clearly recognizable in the Surf Excel clip. Moreover, the factthat the visual religionization38 of the Muslim minority is even extended toor understood to shape young children’s perceptions of each other, should
not be overlooked. As one commentator pointedly argues:
Let’s not wheel our children into our religious identities – and our bitter
divides. [...] They can learn about religion in their own good time. They can
decide about it themselves when they feel like it. They can choose their own
religion. Or choose not to be religious at all, if they like. Why should wecelebrate an ad that instead shows small kids strait-jacketed into religion,39
and all its wonderful divides, before they can even spell ‘lack of choice’?

Yet at the same time, one could argue that the clip not only draws on or
reproduces normative public imaginations of the secular but also challenges established perceptions, for instance by showing a deep friendshipbetween the two children – who seem to live in the same neighborhood,despite an ever-increasing ‘housing apartheid’ in Indian cities.40 The way
the self-confident girl cares for and takes care of the boy is noticed by theother children and possibly makes them reflect and reconsider their initial
reaction when they just saw a Muslim boy on his way to the mosque andinitially wanted to throw colored water at him to spoil his white clothes.
Furthermore, there can hardly be any doubt that the advertising agency must have been fully aware of the instant cry of ‘love jihad’ by Hindu
37 Çinar, Roy and Yahya, Visualizing Secularism and Religion, 14.
38 The term religionization refers to “practices through which religion is homogenized andreified.” In India, as in many other contexts, processes of religionization are entangledwith the politics of secularism. See Markus Dressler, “Religionization and Secularity,”in Companion to the Study of Secularity, ed. HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond theWest, Beyond Modernities,” 2019, https://multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion/religionization-and-secularity.
39 (n.a.), “Detergent ad controversy: The biggest stain. Can we please keep our children
away from the narrative which says ‘we are different but together’?,” DailyO, March 11,
2019, https://www.dailyo.in/variety/surf-excel-advertisement-controversy-holi-in-mythology-why-no-one-is-raising-this-question/story/1/29859.html.
40 Sowmiya Ashok and Mohammad Ali, “Housing apartheid flourishes in Delhi,” The Hindu,
July 6, 2012, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/housing-apartheid-flourishesin-delhi/article3613994.ece.
19nationalist groups – a particularly vicious and widespread propagandist
tool targeting Muslim boys and men who allegedly only pretend to fall inlove with a Hindu girl or woman because they eventually want her to convert to Islam and thereby increase the number of Muslims living in India.
As the title of the clip (“Colors bring us together”) suggests, it is clearlychampioning the idea of mutual respect; of individuals learning to coexist peacefully and even engaging in a care relationship. As such, there nolonger seems to be a need for an external actor who ‘manages’ or ‘accommodates’ religious diversity, which had long been portrayed as inherently
conflict-laden. The second clip goes a step further by weakening the ideaof clear-cut boundaries between Hindus and Muslims in India – or at least
it allows for such a reading.
#Shree Ganesh Apnepan Ka

In September 2018, Brooke Bond Red Label Tea released an advertisement
entitled “#Shree Ganesh Apnepan Ka” during Ganesh Chaturthi, a popularannual Hindu festival celebrating the birthday of Lord Ganesh which is observed throughout India, but particularly in Mumbai and in the southernstates. The advertisement aims to promote a sense of togetherness in a
culturally and religiously diverse society which has seen a sharp increasein violence against religious and caste minorities in recent years. It wasconceptualized by the international communication agency Geometry
Encompass, which claims it is based on a true story. Arpan Jain, Creative
Director of the branch office in Mumbai, explained the motivation andbasic idea behind the campaign in a newspaper interview:
Today, brands must tell stories that resonate with real life and encourage relevant, meaningful conversations. We saw a great human insight and wanted
to tell a simple but thought-provoking story, luckily we found a perfect occasion. #Shree Ganesh Apnepan Ka poses a pertinent question to all of us.
The film was shot in a Ganpati pandal (a marquee), huge numbers of which
can be seen on the streets of Mumbai weeks before the homecoming of
Bappa (Lord Ganesh). Devotees visit pandals to book or purchase an idolfor the occasion and spend a long time choosing the perfect one.41
41 (n.a.), “#ShreeGaneshApnepanKa: Watch Red Label Tea’s new thought-provoking festive campaign,” Brand Equity. Economic Times, September 15, 2019, https://brandequity.
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/advertising/shreeganeshapnepanka-watch-redlabel-teas-new-thought-provoking-festive-campaign/65817225.
20

As Jain explains, the film is aconversation between an idol-maker and a first-time buyer of the idol. In
the conversation, certain unknown facts about Bappa are revealed, alongwith what it truly means to bring home the ‘lord of new beginnings’.42

In the clip, a young man in business attire who the viewer immediately
assumes to be a Hindu enters a pandal and looks around for a Ganesh
idol. The young man is impressed by the old idol-maker’s deep religious
knowledge and is about to select an idol when he sees that the old man
has quietly put on his taqiyah (prayer cap) upon hearing the azaan from anearby mosque. Visibly startled as he realizes that the idol-maker is a practicing Muslim, the young man pretends that he has some urgent businessto do and will return the next day. Knowing exactly what is going on in theyoung man’s mind, the old man asks the young man to at least have a cupof tea with him before he leaves, and the young man accepts the invitation. He ultimately decides to buy a Ganesh idol which the idol-maker had
recommended to him at the beginning of their conversation.

Still from the “#Shri Ganesh Apnepan Ka” clip.

When the old Muslim idol-maker and his young Hindu customer have theirglass of tea together, the camera focuses on the old man’s hands – hands thatserve the tea, and make the idol of Ganesh. Non-commensality as well asanxieties of ritual pollution are thus simply turned into “a matter of a cuppa,”
as my colleague Salma Siddique noted in an informal conversation about
42 (n.a.), “#ShreeGaneshApnepanKa.”
21

the clip, so that tea becomes a much more potent agent of social reform thanthe law. The dialogue in this scene is also very interesting. Still visibly perplexed, the young man asks the old man “Yahii kaam kyom?” which is translated in the English subtitles as “But why did you choose this profession?” The
old man responds “Bhaijaan, yah bhii to ibaadat hai” – “this too is worship.”

Stills from the “#Shri Ganesh Apnepan Ka” clip.

In Islamic contexts, the Arabic word ibadah (Hindi/Urdu: ibaadat) is usually translated as ‘worship.’ It refers primarily to religious rituals, but work
can also be regarded as worship in Islam, and from the perspective of care
ethics, paying attention, responding sympathetically and even empathizing with the visibly irritated young man could also be considered as work.
22

Whether the concept of ibaadat can actually be extended to other religious
contexts would perhaps be a matter of some debate. But if Hinduism is primarily understood as a culture, not as a religion, and if Ganesh Chaturthi
is seen as an inclusive festivity, the displayed notion of ethical secularity as
care would apply to the shared public space of a cultural festival and not areligiously defined space. It is not unlikely at all that the advertisers consciously decided that the campaign should remain ambiguous about this
distinction as well as the question of religious boundaries in general, precisely as it seeks to reach out and appeal to a hugely diverse audience withvery different ideas about ‘secularity,’ ‘religion,’ and especially about Hinduism – either as a religion or a culture. Accordingly, I suggest that the clip
is intentionally polysemic and allows for two different readings – throughthe lens of bhakti or through the lens of ‘Hinduism as Indian culture.’
Bhakti – or the ‘participation in God’ – is often associated with the term
‘popular’ religion and refers to diverse, widespread forms of Indian religiosity that were long neglected by scholars of religion and South Asianists, or
treated “lopsidedly,” as Martin Fuchs puts it.43 As bhakti “threatens the ideaof a unitary character of ‘Hinduism’” and “weakens the distinctions between
Hinduism and other religions, as it develops into a thread that infiltrates everwider circles of Indian religion,”44 the renewed interest in a philosophicalcompass provided by bhakti in India can be seen as a response to the rise ofmajoritarian religious nationalism. This particularly holds true for the ‘rediscovery’ of the 15th-century saint-poet Kabir for whom ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’
were not dichotomous categories and who strongly criticized both the caste
ideology of the Brahmanic Sanskrit tradition and institutionalized Islam inIndia.45 Bhakti’s link to individual experience and mutual recognition – notonly by and through God, but also through other humans, is particularly interesting within the scope of this paper. Recognition in bhakti is a triangularconstellation, as Martin Fuchs explains:
The underlying assumption is that human subjects can relate to themselvesin a positive manner, and assure themselves of their identity, only when
they experience themselves as fully accepted by others. [...] The meaningof the relationship to other humans is that of confirming the individual’s

43 Fuchs, “Indian Imbroglios,” 125.
44 Fuchs, 131.
45 Bergunder, “Religionsvergleich,” 46–47.
23

experience of interaction with the Divine, as it prepares the other bhaktas
for their personal experience of God. And as some forms of bhakti contend,
God too requires recognition by humans who love or worship him or her.46

Reading the “#Shree Ganesh Apnepan Ka” campaign through this lens, theway the old Muslim idol-maker and the young Hindu customer form abond of mutual respect and recognition prepares them for their individual
experience of God, so there is no ‘outside’ of the religious sphere, but thereligious modalities vary and the idea of a unitary Hinduism as well asof distinct religious communities, is blurred or even rendered irrelevant.
On the other hand, reading the clip through the ‘Hinduism as Indian culture’ lens and especially reading Ganesh Chaturthi as a cultural festival oreventsphere which allows space for all religions and also for non-religious
positions, would confirm the differences and distinctions, but neverthelessprovide an inclusive and shared space. ‘Hinduism as Indian culture’ is a
notion that has been increasingly monopolized by Hindu nationalists andturned into an ideology of cultural nationalism which does not support
cultural pluralism or the equal treatment of religious and other minorities.
But as Shylashri Shankar argues in her article “Secularity and Hinduism’s
Imaginaries” (2017), a “zone of ambiguity” which has been created withregard to Hinduism should not be seen as something which has only weakened Indian democracy and secularism.47 Shankar finds the same ambiguity as well as an interesting “interplay between the three imaginaries of
Hinduism – as a religion, a culture, and an ancient order – in the constitution and in subsequent interpretations by the Supreme Court”48 have also
prevented the state from “being torn apart in the fierce battles between
majority and minority religions and between co-religionists”49 and thus
actually strengthened Indian democracy.50 This could help explain why –despite the strong negative reactions that a cause marketing campaign suchas the one discussed here was sure to receive (regardless of the amount ofenthusiastic reactions and positive publicity) – Hindustan Unilever and the46 Fuchs, “Indian Imbroglios,” 133.
47 Shankar, “Secularity and Hinduism’s Imaginaries,” 133.
48 Mirjam Künkler and Shylashri Shankar, “Introduction,” in A Secular Age Beyond theWest: Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Mirjam
Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2017), 18.
49 Künkler and Shankar, “Introduction,” 19.
50 Shankar, “Secularity and Hinduism’s Imaginaries,” 147.
24

advertising agency, Geometry Encompass in Mumbai, consciously chose
Ganesh Chaturthi as the perfect occasion.
Ursula Rao has highlighted both the significance of public rituals for sociopolitical processes and the strong links between different platforms of public
communication.51 The hypervisibility of Hindu politics in the 1990s was a
result of the connections that were successfully established between diverse
communicative spaces, even more so with the explosion of new festivals inthe same decade which added significantly to the image of a vigorous anddominant Hindu nation. Hindu nationalist organizations clearly envisioned
similar religious-political synergies with the promotion of festivals such as
Ganesh Chaturthi in regions and states of India where they had not been celebrated before, such as Kerala in South India. As Richard Cashman’s research
has shown, Ganesh Chaturthi was expanded and politicized at the end of
the 19th century by Indian freedom fighters who supported it as an event
which could increase nationalist fervor and a sense of unity among Hindus –across castes, classes and communities – to counter the divisive politics of the
British colonial administration.52 This inevitably alienated other religious
communities and secular-minded individuals, as Cashman argues, although
the festival always remained open to new interventions and to individuals
who developed their own particular projects in the larger festival framework.53 Today, in the very different context of networked communicationand digital media cultures, state and non-state actors are challenging the appropriation of Ganesh Chaturthi by Hindu nationalist groups. The “#ShreeGanesh Apnepan Ka” campaign can be seen as an intervention and attempt
to break the monopoly that Hindu nationalists claim to hold over this important festival. Indeed, the inclusive character of the festival, which provides space for all religions to join in, is what makes it secular. Commenting
on the campaign, a journalist for the Free Press Journal wrote that:

51 Ursula Rao, “Inter-publics’ Hindu Mobilization beyond the Bourgeois Public Sphere,”
Religion & Society 2 (2011).
52 Richard Cashman, “The Political Recruitment of God Ganapati,” The Indian Economic
and Social History Review 7, no. 3 (1970).
53 Cashman not only considers Ganesh Chaturthi as a festival which enabled individuals in
the past “to develop their own particular projects within the larger festival framework,”
but also argues that Hindu festivals are generally “sufficiently pliable to accommodate
diverse political and social ideas.” See Cashman, “The Political Recruitment,” 372–73.
25

the video gives a clear idea of the secular aspect of Ganesh Chaturthi festival. People from different communities and religions celebrate this festival,
which reminds us about the fact that Ganesh Chaturthi also delivers a message of fraternity and unity.54

The notion of secularity espoused here is based on the aspect of mutual
respect for and recognition of religious diversity in public eventspheres,and the importance of Ganesh’s increasing appeal as a ‘god for all.’ There
were many other voices and events in 2018 which stressed the perceptionof Ganesh Chaturthi as a social event that bridges gaps between castes,classes and communities and hence provides a space for bottom-up initiatives for a new sense of connectedness between the different groups. As
Ganesh Chaturthi coincided with the Mourning of Muharram in 2018,some communities, most notably in Pune, deliberately made an effort todisplay and publicly perform this understanding of secularity which was,however, expressed in a language of religion and for religious people exclusively. The Muslim and Hindu communities in Pune which celebrated
together in the same pandal – and did so again during Ganesh Chaturthi
in 2019 – also sought to claim and re-establish a public memory of a much
longer history of religious festivals which used to be shared and lived together before communal riots broke out in the city in the 1990s.

4 Conclusion
While the self-understanding and representation of the Indian state as thesole guarantor and manager of peaceful religious co-existence has been increasingly questioned, the emerging alternative visualities and imaginaries
of living in difference in focus here are nevertheless strongly centered onreligious beliefs and, more importantly, on religiously defined communities. Interestingly, however, there are also many individuals who actively
use the event of Ganesh Chaturthi to reflect publicly on the question of
why they, as people who call and see themselves as atheists, celebrate thisreligious festival every year. In this vein, the headlines of related articles
54 (n.a.), “This two-minute clip on Ganesh Chaturthi explains secularism in the simplest
yet heart-warming manner; watch now,” Free Press Journal, September 12, 2018, https://www.freepressjournal.in/cmcm/this-emotional-video-gives-a-glimpse-of-secular-aspect-of-ganesh-chaturthi-watch-now.
26

as well as blog entries in 2018 were, for instance: “An Atheist’s Ganesha,”“I might be an atheist, but I’m going to miss you terribly Bappa,” or “Ganesh
Chaturthi 2018: Finding value (as an atheist) in religion & faith.” Other commentators used the festive occasion to lash out against the practice of idolatryin Hinduism. For example, a person who signed his article as Anish Upadhya,
triggered a very vivid discussion on quora.com in September 2018 when they
asked “Why do Hindus still celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi as if it is a religious
festival when it was started by Lokmanya Tilak to mainly generate nationalistic
fervor among people in Maharashtra against the British colonial rule?”
I am neither disrespectful to the bhakts, nor will I force my ideology onthem. Finding or not finding God is a very personal journey, and everyone goes through it. But if someone asks me, I’ll help them with a rational
approach. For rationality has liberated me. While saying good-bye to my
beloved Bappa, I say to him – Pudhchya varshi lavkar ya – please come earlynext year. You may not exist in reality, but humanity’s belief in you brings
joy, and we can always do with a little bit of that.55

It is hence precisely the ambiguity surrounding Ganesh Chaturthi, which
can be understood as both a religious and cultural, but also as a national
festival, that provides a communicative space for the self-representationof people and individual reasons to celebrate this festival. It may only bea temporary space and we can doubt whether it is really an option thatis available and meaningful to the majority.56 However, it is interesting tonote that festivals such as Holi or Ganesh Chaturthi are seen as an opportunity to contest, negotiate or to reproduce existing ideas and forms of secularity as well as religious plurality in India. The two clips discussed in thispaper were informed by and contributed to these ongoing negotiations,
if only marginally, while the highly polarized reactions to each of themshows how difficult it is and will be to find a common basis for sharedvision or consensus.
55 Ashish Dikshit, “I might be an atheist, but I’m going to miss you terribly, Bappa,” The
Quint, September 15, 2016, https://www.thequint.com/voices/blogs/my-relationshipwith-lord-ganesha-and-why-it-transformed-from-blind-faith-to-a-rational-enthusiasm.
56 If we consider the fact that a number of well-known atheists were murdered in recent
decades, it is very clear that organized atheists in India increasingly experience terrorist violence and strategic attempts to silence their critical voices in public. However, forthose who uncouple their public positioning as non-religious or atheist individuals fromany critique of caste-based discrimination in Hinduism, there seems to be little or no riskin publicly expressing their conviction.
27

What I hope to have shown with this exploratory analysis in the fieldof cause marketing is that the visualities and imaginaries of secularity in
the Indian context are more varied than is often assumed. While thesevisualities and imaginaries cannot be seen as mere effects of state policy,
the fact that they are increasingly being articulated as alternative imaginaries has a lot to do with the general disillusionment with political secularism. Against the background of the Hindu nationalist party BJP’s landslide
victory in the Indian election of 2019, many actors in diverse contexts andsocial spheres are searching for a philosophical compass for a new kind of
secularism that can form “deep ties of friendship between diverse groups,”
as documentary filmmaker and media scholar Fathima Nizaruddin put it
in a personal conversation. However, while the state may be visually absent
in cause marketing campaigns and corporate visions, Ajay Gudavarthy argues that such a new kind of secularism does require a welfare state thatworks according to the principles of equality and compassion:
Secularism in essence is the ability to forge friendships with unlikely socialgroups or the ability to express solidarity with strangers. It is, in a sense,
the opposite of xenophobia, which means phobia of strangers. If the idea
is to strike at the root of xenophobia and build friendships, not merely tolerate the differences, then surely secularism needs to have a wider canvas
than merely being obsessed with the way [the] state deals with the issueof religious differences. Even that role of the state has to be toned withthe essential philosophical compass of how best to forge close-knit ties between different cultural groups, not merely religious but also caste, ethnic,
regional, linguistic, among others. All of these ties concern secularism as asocial philosophy.
The wider canvas in the context of India, and elsewhere too, should beg thequestion: can we afford a secular ethos in society without a welfare state?57

57 Ajay Gudavarthy, “India Needs to Rethink How It Looks at Secularism,” The Wire, February 1, 2018, https://thewire.in/politics/india-secularism-rethink-state-religion.
28

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