Humiliating defamation of Durga Puja by deodorant company

An alert reader of HJS website informed us about the following humiliating defamation of Hindu Women and Hindu culture and rituals. Please read below and protest –

For Hindu Bengalis all over the world Durga Puja and Maa Durga are integral to their social and religious life. Millions of people from all over the world come to Bengal to enjoy the purity and devotion involved in this puja in the month of Sarat(Autumn). And bengalis prepare themselves ‘with malice to none and charity for all’ in this puja season to welcome the Mother and her devoted children. The puja is held in various capacities in traditional, conservative bengali homes (called Bonedi puja) or puja pandaals/puja mandaps (normally organised by the residents of the locality). These Bonedi pujas are a very special part of the Durga puja of Bengal as they only started these pujas hundreds of years ago.

These days a very sick ad is making rounds in the TV. It is an ad by a deodorant company with the brand name ‘Wild Stone’ which creates a sick picture of the Bonedi pujas of Bengal and the Hindu women who worship her with all the devotion in the world during the four days of the puja held in the month of October.

This ad shows a traditional, conservative Hindu bengali home where the Durga Puja proceedings are going on in a big open space in the ground floor with sounds of drums and chantings creating the ideal holy environment for the puja in the morning. Then a bengali lady appears; her wet hairs, white sari with red border, her offerings in a ‘thali’ and facial expression imply that she has gone through the mandatory abulations to purify her body and mind and prepared herself for the service of Maa Durga. She is shown rushing through the corridor in a hurry to join the puja downstairs. On the way she collides with a guy with a wicked smile, who is very surprisingly not in a traditional dress and wears western clothes even on a puja day (I wonder how the western sponsor of this sick ad missed this chance to make a louder mockery of our culture). Then the lady smells something and both of them starts having sex and continue to do so while the sounds of drum and chantings provide the background score. Here is the link to find the full ad, a censored version of which is being shown in the TV commercials www.youtube.com/watch?v=85dcxgRqM90

I protest against this ad because:

This makes a mockery of the devotion and rituals involved in the Hindu Pujas,
It belittles the importance of celibacy, self-control and asceticism during the Hindu pujas,
This is the creation of a few perverted minds whose main intention seems to defame Hinduism and if they are not punished we have to be ready to observe a rally of many such lurid and sick portrayal of Hindu culture in secular India via the cash-driven media,
This is an deliberate attack on Hindu sentiments which might have sad after-effects in the long run,
last but not the least, it tries to portray the Hindu women as spineless creatures who could be made to ignore the religious duties and lured into sexual activities, even though they are supposed to refrain from these during the pujas, by things that are barely ‘wild in nature'(the punchline of this deodorant is ‘wild in nature’).

I don’t know whether such ads of zero values and crooked intent help them sell more bottles of their products or not but definitely help them achieve their other intention of defaming Hinduism. Since the free-media policy gives these dirty minds a free hand to defame the Hindu deities and the religion in general we have to keep a close a vigil on these and guard our religion with everything we have. The world is going through turbulent times. If we don’t guard our religion the way we guard the flame of a candle with our palms so that the wind doesn’t put it off, I fear our Hinduism will also lose its purity and power amidst this wind of change around.

I request you to kindly pay some attention to this issue and take a stern action against this deodorant company as early as possible.

Thanks and Regards,
An Alert Hindu