Brands Must Learn That Religious Traditions Are Not Disposable Creative Props

The controversy surrounding Kriti Sanon’s Raksha Bandhan advertisement has now moved far beyond the question of whether one outfit was appropriate for one festival. What began as criticism of a jewellery campaign has developed into a wider argument about how brands use religion, culture and tradition as commercial assets — and what responsibility comes with doing so.

The advertisement featured Sanon in an Indo-Western outfit with a bralette-style blouse as part of a campaign centred on Raksha Bandhan. Critics questioned not only the styling but also the overall presentation of the festival, including the absence of some traditional imagery and the inclusion of a dog in the rakhi sequence. Supporters, meanwhile, defended the campaign as a contemporary interpretation of a family tradition.

The controversy intensified after Kangana Ranaut publicly criticised the advertisement. Sanon subsequently responded by arguing that festivals derive their meaning from emotions and traditions rather than clothing, adding that culture and traditions are in a woman’s heart, “not in her neckline”. She also explained that she and her sister tie rakhi to each other and extend that bond to their dogs because they consider them family.

Sanon is entitled to defend herself. She is entitled to choose her clothes. Nobody seriously arguing this issue needs to dispute either proposition.

But those propositions do not settle the controversy.

The real question is whether a company can take a religious or cultural tradition, use its name, symbolism and emotional significance to sell products, reinterpret that tradition according to its own creative preferences and then dismiss objections about the representation as merely another attempt to police a woman’s wardrobe.

That question deserves far more serious consideration.

Raksha Bandhan Was the Commercial Proposition

This was not a random photograph of Kriti Sanon walking down the street.

Nobody happened to discover what she was wearing and arbitrarily connected it to Raksha Bandhan.

Raksha Bandhan was the context of the advertisement. It was the commercial proposition.

The festival gave the campaign its meaning. The rakhi gave the campaign its visual identity. The emotional relationship associated with Raksha Bandhan supplied the sentiment through which jewellery was being marketed.

That distinction is critical.

A person wearing whatever she chooses in her private life owes nobody a cultural explanation. But when a corporation deliberately places a celebrity inside a campaign constructed around a recognised religious or cultural tradition, the portrayal itself becomes legitimate territory for public criticism.

Audiences are entitled to say that an advertisement supposedly celebrating their tradition does not represent that tradition in a manner they recognise or respect.

Reducing every such objection to “telling women what to wear” therefore risks avoiding the larger criticism instead of answering it.

Commercialising Tradition Comes With Responsibility

Indian festivals represent enormous commercial opportunities.

Companies build entire advertising calendars around Diwali, Holi, Raksha Bandhan, Navratri, Eid, Christmas and other occasions because festivals create precisely the emotions marketers want to associate with products: family, belonging, nostalgia, generosity, celebration and identity.

Brands want that emotional capital.

They want consumers to recognise the festival immediately. They want its associations to transfer to the product. They want families to buy jewellery, clothes, sweets, electronics, cars and almost everything else because a cultural occasion has created an emotional reason to spend.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But companies cannot demand the commercial benefits of tradition while pretending that they have no responsibility towards the tradition itself.

If Raksha Bandhan matters enough to sell jewellery, then what Raksha Bandhan means to millions of people should matter enough to influence how the campaign is conceived.

You cannot invite a community’s cultural attachment into your marketing strategy and then act astonished when that community has opinions about how its traditions are represented.

Kriti Sanon’s Response Has Made the Debate Larger

Sanon’s response has also changed the character of the controversy.

Her argument is essentially that a woman’s commitment to culture cannot be measured by the neckline of her clothes. As a general proposition about women’s freedom, that is perfectly defensible.

But that was not the only criticism of the advertisement.

The disagreement was also about context.

An advertising campaign is a constructed product. Clothes are selected. Sets are selected. Props are selected. Scripts are approved. Celebrities agree to participate. Campaigns go through layers of creative and corporate decision-making before the public ever sees them.

Therefore, asking why particular creative decisions were made in an advertisement built around Raksha Bandhan is not automatically equivalent to prescribing what every Indian woman should wear.

That distinction matters enormously.

Sanon’s subsequent defence does not prove that she or anybody associated with the campaign intended to insult Hindu religious beliefs. No responsible argument should claim that it does.

But it does show that, even after the criticism became clear, she chose to defend the campaign through the language of personal clothing autonomy rather than acknowledging the separate question of cultural representation.

That is precisely why the matter deserves examination on its actual facts rather than being reduced to competing social-media slogans.

A Brand Cannot Commercialise Faith and Dismiss the Faithful

There is a strange contradiction increasingly visible in festival advertising.

The audience is told that tradition is enormously meaningful when the company wants to sell something.

The same audience can then be told that traditional expectations are irrelevant when it dislikes the advertising execution.

Brands cannot logically have it both ways.

If the cultural meaning of Raksha Bandhan is sufficiently valuable to form the emotional foundation of a commercial campaign, people who care about Raksha Bandhan have a legitimate stake in discussing how that meaning is represented.

That does not give anybody a veto over advertising.

It does not mean every Raksha Bandhan campaign must feature identical clothing, identical rituals or identical family structures.

Traditions evolve. Families celebrate differently. Advertising is entitled to reflect that diversity.

But there is a substantial difference between modern interpretation and treating a tradition as merely convenient visual inventory.

Brands need to understand that distinction before campaigns are released, not after controversies erupt.

The Matter Deserves a Formal Legal Examination

There is now another question that cannot simply be decided by Instagram arguments: did anything associated with the campaign cross a legal threshold?

India’s Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita contains specific provisions concerning religious feelings.

Section 299 concerns deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage the religious feelings of a class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs. Section 302 separately addresses words, gestures or objects used with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of a person.

The critical words are deliberate and, under Section 299, malicious.

Offence alone is not enough.

Anger on social media is not enough.

A controversial advertisement is not automatically a criminal offence.

But that does not mean the question should simply be waved away because the people involved are celebrities or major brands.

If a formal complaint is made presenting a credible allegation that a statutory offence may have occurred, the authorities should examine it objectively.

An investigation is not a conviction.

It is the process through which investigators determine whether there is evidence capable of establishing the ingredients of an offence.

Investigators Should Look at the Entire Creative Process

If authorities ever examine the matter, they should not simply stare at a screenshot and decide whether they personally like the outfit.

That would be absurd.

The relevant questions would concern intent.

What was the original advertising brief?

How was Raksha Bandhan proposed to be represented?

Who developed the concept?

Who approved the styling?

What discussions took place around cultural and religious sensitivity?

Were alternative presentations considered?

What did the company intend to communicate through each disputed element?

Were any objections raised internally?

What was the celebrity endorser told about the campaign?

Those questions could help distinguish an insensitive or poorly judged creative concept from conduct capable of satisfying the much higher criminal threshold of deliberate and malicious religious insult.

That distinction should be established through evidence, not assumed in advance by either side.

Prosecute If the Evidence Meets the Law

If an investigation finds no evidence of criminal intent, the matter should end there.

But if investigators obtain evidence satisfying the elements prescribed by law, prosecution should follow exactly as it would in any other case.

Celebrity status should provide no immunity.

Corporate size should provide no immunity.

A sophisticated public-relations campaign should provide no immunity.

The principle should be extremely simple: the law applies according to evidence.

The objective should not be to manufacture a criminal case because people are angry. That would be as dangerous as refusing to investigate simply because the accused happens to be influential.

India needs neither mob justice nor celebrity privilege.

It needs consistent application of law.

Accountability Is Not Censorship

Any demand for investigation will inevitably produce accusations of censorship.

That argument should also be examined carefully.

Creative freedom matters. Artists, filmmakers, advertisers and celebrities must have substantial latitude to challenge conventions and produce unconventional work.

But creative freedom has never meant legal immunity.

India places legal boundaries around speech and expression in numerous contexts. Those boundaries themselves are subject to constitutional scrutiny and judicial interpretation, but their existence cannot simply be wished away whenever a controversy involves popular culture.

Requesting an investigation into whether an existing law applies is not the same thing as demanding that the government dictate advertising scripts.

The proper sequence is straightforward.

A complaint alleges an offence.

Investigators examine evidence.

If the evidence does not satisfy the law, no prosecution follows.

If it does, prosecution proceeds and the courts decide the case.

That is due process.

The Standard Must Apply to Every Religion

This principle cannot be reserved for Hinduism.

If brands are expected to exercise care while commercially using Hindu traditions, the same standard must apply to Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and every other faith or religious community.

Nobody should want a system in which advertisers maintain an informal spreadsheet calculating which religions require extreme sensitivity and which religions can be treated as safe territory for provocative experimentation.

That would be both socially unhealthy and fundamentally unequal.

The rule should instead be consistent: creativity is free, criticism is free, and the law applies equally where its statutory threshold is crossed.

Such consistency would also strengthen the argument of Hindus who believe their traditions are sometimes treated more casually because advertisers assume controversy will ultimately carry little consequence.

Hindu Festivals Cannot Become a Safe Zone for Experiments

That perception deserves attention.

Over the years, advertisements built around Hindu festivals have repeatedly generated controversies involving campaigns that attempt to reinterpret customs, attach unrelated social messaging to festivals or fundamentally alter familiar symbolism.

Not every such campaign is offensive.

Not every controversy is justified.

And repetition alone does not prove an organised hostility towards Hinduism.

But advertising agencies would be foolish to ignore the cumulative public perception being created.

A significant section of consumers increasingly asks why Hindu festivals so frequently appear to become laboratories for creative experimentation while brands often appear far more cautious when working with the religious sensitivities of other communities.

Instead of responding defensively every time the question appears, the advertising industry should examine why the perception exists.

Respecting Hindu consumers does not require freezing Hindu culture in the past.

It requires recognising that modernisation and cultural contempt are not the same thing — and ensuring campaigns remain firmly on the correct side of that line.

Corporate Responsibility Should Begin Before Publication

Most large companies would never release a major advertising campaign without considering trademarks, contractual liabilities, celebrity rights, product claims and reputational risks.

Religious and cultural sensitivity should receive equally serious consideration.

That does not require establishing government committees to pre-approve advertisements.

It requires basic professional competence.

If a campaign revolves around a religious festival, someone inside the creative and corporate approval chain should ask:

What precisely are we depicting?

Why have we chosen to depict it this way?

Does this creative decision contribute meaningfully to the campaign?

Are we inadvertently trivialising something that our target audience considers sacred or culturally important?

How would we explain the campaign publicly if challenged?

If nobody can answer those questions convincingly before publication, perhaps the campaign is not ready.

One Serious Case Could Change Advertising Behaviour

Accountability also has a deterrent function.

If major brands believe that every religious controversy will follow the same predictable cycle — outrage, trending hashtags, defensive statements and complete disappearance within forty-eight hours — there is little incentive to change internal decision-making.

But if companies understand that credible allegations can trigger genuine scrutiny, creative processes will become more responsible.

Executives will ask questions before approving campaigns.

Advertising agencies will conduct better cultural research.

Legal teams will examine potential exposure.

Celebrity endorsers may become more interested in understanding the concepts to which they attach their names and faces.

That is not a bad outcome.

The purpose should never be fear for its own sake.

The purpose should be responsibility.

Faith Is Not Free Advertising Inventory

The Kriti Sanon controversy should ultimately produce a conversation much larger than Kriti Sanon.

No celebrity should be told how she must dress in her personal life.

At the same time, no corporation should expect to commercially appropriate the emotional value of a religious tradition while insisting that the community attached to that tradition has no legitimate right to challenge its representation.

Both propositions can be true simultaneously.

Religious traditions existed long before advertising agencies discovered how effectively festivals could sell products.

Those traditions belong first to the people who practise, preserve and pass them on.

Brands are welcome to celebrate them.

Brands are welcome to advertise during them.

Brands are even welcome to reinterpret them creatively.

But they must also accept responsibility for the choices they make.

In the present controversy, nobody should declare criminal guilt on the basis of outrage alone. But if a credible complaint alleges that the legal threshold relating to deliberate religious insult has been crossed, there should be no hesitation in examining the campaign, the decisions behind it and the available evidence.

If the threshold is not met, say so.

If it is met, prosecute.

That is how both freedom and accountability are protected.

And perhaps that is the lesson the advertising industry most urgently needs to learn:

Religious and cultural traditions are not disposable creative props. If you choose to use people’s faith to sell your product, you also inherit the responsibility to treat that faith with seriousness.