Kriti Sanon probably didn't imagine that tying a rakhi in a jewellery advertisement would result in one of Bollywood's most heated debates of the week.
The actress' Raksha Bandhan campaign for GIVA has come under fire from a section of social media users. There are two principal objections. Kriti is dressed in an off-white bralette-style blouse with a cape and draped skirt, which some viewers believe is inappropriate for a traditional festival. The other objection is to a sequence where she ties a rakhi to her pet dog. Some also questioned the absence of conventional elements such as the puja thali and tilak. Kriti has not publicly responded to the criticism so far.
But beneath the noise around one advertisement lies a more interesting question. Who gets to decide what an Indian woman is supposed to look like while celebrating an Indian festival?
There is certainly a legitimate argument from the other side. This isn't footage from Kriti's private Raksha Bandhan celebration. It is an advertisement created by a brand specifically around a religious-cultural festival. Audiences are therefore entitled to judge whether its visual language feels authentic to them. A viewer saying, "This doesn't resemble the Raksha Bandhan I know," is expressing an opinion about advertising. Brands routinely succeed or fail depending on whether consumers connect with their interpretation of culture. That criticism shouldn't automatically be dismissed as regressive.
But somewhere between questioning the creative choices of the campaign and scrutinising how much of Kriti Sanon's body should be visible while sitting next to a man playing her brother, the conversation changes entirely.
It stops being about Raksha Bandhan. It becomes about policing the woman celebrating it. And therein lies Bollywood's peculiar contradiction.
Audiences routinely watch actresses in bikinis, swimsuits, plunging gowns, item songs and intimate scenes. Those images are consumed, shared, celebrated and sometimes turned into viral clips. Yet put a modern outfit inside the visual grammar of a festival and suddenly the same female body becomes a cultural question.
Perhaps because Indian popular culture still places women in two oddly separate boxes. There is the modern woman of films, fashion shoots, holidays and Instagram. And then there is the supposedly different woman who enters the frame during Diwali, Raksha Bandhan, Karwa Chauth or a wedding.
The second woman is expected to visually signal tradition. We have become comfortable with modernity, provided it changes clothes before entering the festival.
There is another interesting layer to the controversy. The decision to include the dog wasn't an accidental gag. GIVA had already described its Raksha Bandhan initiative as Furever Sibling, built around the idea that pets have become family members for many contemporary households. The company also linked the campaign to a pet collection. In other words, what some viewers interpreted as trivialising the festival was precisely the modernisation of the ritual that the campaign was attempting. One can still dislike that idea.
Not every tradition needs to be reinvented by an advertising agency. Not every attempt at being progressive or "Gen Z friendly" automatically works. And sometimes brands can become so desperate to reinterpret festivals that the original emotional simplicity gets lost. That criticism is worth having.
What is harder to justify is the belief that there is only one authorised way of celebrating a festival in a country containing hundreds of millions of families with different customs, clothing, relationships and rituals. Traditions themselves have never been frozen photographs.
Sisters tie rakhis to sisters. Women tie them to friends. Children tie them to people they consider protectors. Families living overseas celebrate differently from families in small towns. Some perform elaborate rituals; others simply tie the thread, exchange sweets and hug. And yes, increasingly, people include their pets in practically every family celebration imaginable.
So the real problem with the Kriti Sanon advertisement may not actually be whether it is traditional enough. It may be that advertising today is caught between two Indias that increasingly coexist in the same household. One wants brands to reflect how lifestyles are changing. Another wants festivals, particularly their representation in popular culture, protected from excessive reinvention. Neither feeling is imaginary.
The mistake begins when cultural disagreement turns into moral judgment of the woman at the centre of the frame. Kriti's blouse, GIVA's creative direction and tying a rakhi to a pet can certainly be debated. But perhaps a woman's decency doesn't need to be.
Because if Raksha Bandhan is ultimately about affection, family and protection, it would be rather ironic if its biggest cultural conversation became about protecting society from an actress' blouse.
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