Daijiworld Media Network - Entertainment

Mumbai, Apr 23: Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who is the ambassador for Kalyan Jewllers seems to have under a fair amount of flak from activists who have taken offence to her recently released advert poster and sent an open letter condemning it to be racist.

The poster shows Aishwarya resplendent in a regal dress and bedecked in jewels sitting on a devan while a dark complexioned child is seen standing behind her in a dhoti holding a parasol over her head. The whole image evokes a old worldly feel of rich people having poorer people do menial chores for the comfort of the rich.

The Letter reportedly read, "We wish to convey our dismay at the concept of this advertisement, and that you have, perhaps unthinkingly, associated with such a regressive portrayal of a child to sell a product. While advertisers routinely use fantasy images to sell products, they must surely desist from using images that condone, legitimise, normalise, or build desirable fantasy around slavery or servitude of any kind, including child slavery or child servitude. Further, the extremely fair colour of your skin (as projected in the advertisement) contrasted with the black skin of the slave-boy is obviously a deliberate "creative" juxtaposition by the advertising agency, and insidiously racist. The genealogy of this image can be traced back to 17th and 18th century colonial European portraits of white aristocracy, depicting women being waited upon by their black "servants".

Aishwarya's publicist immediately swung into action taking umbrage at the besmirching of her hitherto pristine image and answered the open letter with one of their own which they addressed to Farah Naqvi, Nisha Agrawal, Enakshi Ganguly, Bharti Ali, Madhu Mehra, Shantha Sinha, Harsh Mander and Mridula Bajaj. Archana Sadanand who spoke on behalf of Aishwarya accompanied the letter with the original photo of Aishwarya sans the photoshop work done on the final image and wrote,
“Dear Farah Naqvi, Nisha Agrawal, Enakshi Ganguly, Bharti Ali, Madhu Mehra, Shantha Sinha, Harsh Mander and Mridula Bajaj,
On the onset we would like to thank you on drawing our attention to the observation of the perception of the advertisement.
Here is an attachment of the shot taken by somebody during the shoot. The final layout of the ad is entirely the prerogative of the creative team for a brand. However I shall forward your article as a viewpoint that can be taken into consideration by the creative team of professional working on the brand visual communication.

Thank you once again… Regards Archana Sadanand, IMAGESMITHS (Publicist to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan).”