What we believed to have produced for Myntra.com was a simple, funny, and effective film that would sell Team India Cricket jerseys. As the TVs will be packed with big budget TVCs from more companies than there are teams in the World Cup, we decided to release it online — where content truly is king.
After much deliberation, we zoned in on a concept inspired by the Indian epic Mahabharata, and weaved our tale around some of its characters. The plot revolved around the ‘bad guys’ from the epic with no reference made to Gods or the good guys. The client loved the film. Everyone at work had only good things to say about it. And more than 10,000 people said ‘LOL’ to it after just 4 days of it being online.
It was then that we received this link. We were taken aback, not by the threat itself, but because of the reason behind it. Apparently, a few fundamentalist Hindus found it disrespectful towards the epic.
As much as it is their right to air the concern about the film, it is equally ours to put up a work that we believe is in no way disrespectful to Hindu religion or its followers. And ours was not the only work that these fundamentalists found disrespectful. We went through their website and found similar cry being raised on other ads, as well.
Thankfully, more people were on our side. Anant Rangaswamy from Campaign India supported us with a fiercely written article that called attention to this new threat to creativity. We strongly believe that such furore is raised only by those who have nothing better to do and crave for some publicity. An idle mind is a humourless devil’s workshop indeed.
But, our biggest support was seen on the page of the video itself. On Youtube, it has registered close to 22,000 views as of this writing. Many youtube commentators have voiced their support to the work and asked the others to ‘lighten up’. And we are sure you will feel the same way too. So here’s the video so you can form your own opinion — whatever it is, make sure you let us know.
