DHave you ever felt like when you read an item in the news or saw a tweet that it must be a joke? Only to find out it’s actually deadly serious. I have to say that a lot happens to me these days.
Last week, someone on my timeline retweeted a tweet by Dr Prachi Sadhvi. Sadhvi tweeted, ‘Have you carefully watched the Cadbury Chocolate ad on TV channels. “The shopkeeper is Damodar, the poor diya seller. This is done to show someone in bad light with the name of father of PM Narendra Modi. The father of the chaiwala is the diyawala. Cadbury Company should be ashamed.”
And of course the inevitable hashtag was “#BoycottCadbury.”
At first, I was incredulous. Maybe this tweet was a message from the boycotters, I thought. But no, it was serious. And of course “#BoycottCadbury” was soon trending on Twitter.
Out of curiosity, I checked Dr. Prachi Sadhvi’s profile. Her 2,58,000 followers were blue ticks and she described herself as the leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).
I don’t know how the boycott happened. If we keep track of everything that involves someone named Damodar, I’m sure we can find thousands of books, movies, commercials, etc. to get us excited. So, I wondered why Cadbury was being targeted.
Another attempt was made to organize a boycott of Cadbury on the grounds that the company’s chocolates contained beef products. that Out To be wrong, as it was based on a screenshot of a product description posted by an Australian affiliate of Cadbury. No Indian brand would be so foolish to sell non-vegetarian chocolates, let alone beef chocolates.
Logic suggests that the boycott will not have a significant impact on Cadbury’s sales. Imagine that a mother takes her child to a chocolate shop. When the child says she wants a Cadbury, will the mother say, “No son, we can’t eat Cadbury because the company once put out an advertisement in which a character shared a name with Narendrabhai’s father. They’re bad, bad, bad people!”
Somehow, I don’t think so.
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boycott culture and cancel
We can laugh at the epidemics of boycotts but they are no fun for their goal. Some of them follow a certain twisted logic. If Aamir Khan dares to speak up, it may be useful to silence him by boycotting companies that do business with him. Outlaws of that nature, directed at those with influence, can serve a devious purpose. But chocolate makers? I just dont get it. To demand the boycott of Fruit and Nut bars, you have to be a little nutty yourself.
In some sense, boycotts are our version of the canceled culture of the West, which is likewise arbitrary and often senseless. The difference is that western boycott/cancellation campaigns are not linked to the political right. They usually stem from people who claim to hate the right wing.
It’s not clear to me whether any of this works in the long run. In India, the boycott brigade managed to scare the film industry. But did the boycott really affect the box office performance of the films? would like Lal Singh Chaddha Have you been a hit even if you haven’t been boycotted? why was brahmastra Such a huge hit if there was any power in the boycott? Are Ranbir Kapoor fans ready to leave him as someone on social media has found that the actor once said that he ate beef?
It’s the same with the cancel culture. If threats by activists to ‘cancel’ individuals had so much power, what about the British author JK Rowling who has been the target of such campaigns? Rowling’s sin is clearly that she doesn’t respect transgender rights enough, which may or may not be true. But as the cancellation campaign goes on, it grows from strength to strength.
The sinister thing about boycotts (though not the culture of cancellation, which is almost always wrong in almost all circumstances) is that it’s hard to find anything to object to, either morally or legally. People have every right not to eat Cadbury’s chocolate or refuse to watch Aamir Khan’s movies. There is no way you can blame them for exercising that option.
And indeed, most countries have used boycotts as a tool of state policy. For decades, most of the civilized world boycotted goods exported by the apartheid regime in South Africa. As Nelson Mandela later confirmed, these boycotts (along with economic sanctions) reduced apartheid.
America boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics on the invasion of Afghanistan. India often refuses to play cricket with Pakistan when tensions escalate and we believe the boycott will put pressure on Pakistanis.
So, how can we object if an easily outraged nationalist mob threatens to boycott individuals or companies on social media?
The answer is that we cannot.
How the boycott succeeds
We can reject them, but in a free society we must let the boycott run its course. My own understanding is that they are less and less effective. It’s easy to get a Boycott campaign trending on Twitter. (Give 5 lakh bucks to social media consultants and they’ll even trend your cat on Twitter.) And yes, there will be a ruckus who will try to enforce the boycott.
But the central assumption of all flippant exclusion calls is flawed. Those who call for boycotts believe that people are sheep, or worse, total idiots. Tell them to boycott something or someone and they will blindly follow the lead.
As we’ve seen, it doesn’t work that way. People are not stupid. If they believe the incitement is justified – for example, that Pakistan has promoted terrorism in India, that someone has gone beyond ambiguity in their statements or behavior – they will join in and make the boycott a success.
But otherwise, they are getting bored with repeated boycott calls on trivial grounds one after the other. Parents do not want to deny chocolates to their children as some VHP leaders are thinking of something innocuous. Fans of a movie star don’t suddenly stop watching his movies if they learn that they once said they liked hamburgers.
The trick is to persevere to the goal and watch out for the outlier. Too often, alas, individuals and companies run away in fear and give up during the initial stages of exclusion. In this way the boycotters get strength.
But show some courage, show some patience and the crowd will give up and move on.
Veer Sanghvi is a print and television journalist and talk show host. He tweeted on @virsanghvi. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)