An advertisement (video above) by a Kerala-based jewellery chain which features Amitabh Bachchan and his daughter Shweta Bachchan Nanda has come under fire from a bank union. The advertisement features Bachchan as a righteous old man who visits the bank with his daughter for his pension. Bachchan’s character is dismissed by one choleric bank official after another, until he’s finally sent to a dubious manager.
The All India Bank Officers’ Confederation, which claims to have a membership of about 3,20,000 officers, wasn’t too pleased with the advertisement. They went so far as to call it “disgusting”, deeming it “a case of defamation” of all banks and threatened to sue Kalyan Jewellers.
Why the uproar? PTI reports that Soumya Datta, General Secretary of AIBOC, claims that the theme, tone and tenor of the advertisement was “disgusting, derogatory, to say the least and is aimed to create distrust in the banking system, for pure commercial gain.”
Bachchan wasn’t spared from the wrath either. The bank union suggested that the actor “made a mockery of the entire bankers’ community in the ad which is deplorable and culpable”, though they did give him the benefit of doubt and suggested he was perhaps unaware of doing so.
Upon facing the music, the jewellery chain came on record to reiterate that the advertisement was “pure fiction” and insisted that their intension was never to generalise about bank officers at large. They also promised to add a disclaimer saying that the characters and situation depicted are fictional.
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