Make it new

As folks in the 8220;persuasion industries8221; of advertising and publicity are fond of saying, branding is everything. The government8217;s decision to shun the obvious beard-topi imagery to depict minorities, and opt for five no-fuss, 8220;integrated8221; characters, and a punchy 8220;aap badhenge, desh badhega8221; is certainly a welcome break. Visual cliches signal a dead spot in the imagination 8212; but equally, they serve as important mental shortcuts, so the way to fight persistent stereotypes is to replace them with a diversity of images. Replacing minority stock characters with new possibilities, like Abida the Muslim medical student or Parvinder the Sikh pilot, is a small and refreshing jolt to our circuitry.

Anyone with a passing familiarity of Doordarshan and its nation-welding project will remember the national integration tableaux where the Indian state composed its own image through these public-service advertisements 8212; whether it was about population control or 8220;unity in diversity8221; or schooling. There are ideological assumptions embedded into these texts 8212; they make bids on how viewers will react to the world around them. The audience, in turn, may take what fits or discard these 8220;messages8221; 8212; their response is by no means uncomplicated identification. But either way, when one is battered with images of Muslim backwardness or religious extremism, it is important to counter them with images of ordinary citizens getting on with their lives. Recall the stirring and effective ads right after 9/11 in the US 8212; a montage of citizens, of different ages, races and religions looking straight into the camera to say, 8220;I am an American.8221;

Besides by now, the visual vocabulary of the early public-service broadcasting days has seeped into our cultural cortex, and even now, anything from steel to scooters, cement to cellphones continue to refer to the same staples 8212; the child planting a sapling, the laughing families on tractors, the girl hiding behind her veil. And after a certain point, they simply cease to communicate, so even government advertising has to fight the switch that flips off in our heads when we8217;re faced with more of the same. 8220;Making it new8221; is important, to peel away the accumulated layers of unconscious prejudice and rewire our synapses, just a slight bit.