A Nation Of No: A Brief History Of Boycotts In India

If you have been on the Indian internet for even a day, you would be familiar with the word ‘boycott’. Historically, boycotts are most frequently used by labour organizations as a tactic to win improved wages and working conditions from upper management. Brittanica describes it as, “Organized ostracism to protest practices that are regarded as unfair. Gandhi used it as a method of civil disobedience during the colonial era, bringing light to the Swadeshi movement.”

However, it seems that every time I log onto Twitter, there’s a trending hashtag to boycott something or the other, whether it be a movie, a book, or even a person.

We all know that the daily use of social media has changed life as we know it. Even 10 years ago the social media landscape was extremely different to what it is now. Today, with smartphones and data connections being accessible, the Indian internet population has grown to the second largest in the world, only after China. This has dramatically changed the way we connect and interact with each other.

Public internet spaces like Facebook and Twitter have allowed us to criticise and praise in equal measure. Pockets have formed in the corners, which has led to the creation of an echo chamber; leading us to believe that our world is bigger than it actually is in real life. Traditional media then picks up these niche internet topics and sensationalises them further, adding more fuel to the fire.

Boycotting things, in particular, has been very popular in the recent past. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the time that we have spent on the internet has given us a false sense of our own power. Boycotting everything from Bollywood films before they even hit the theatres, to jewellery advertisements to chow mein, desi Twitter has a new target every day. We need to question if there is any good reasoning behind these boycotts, and what effect boycotting things on the internet has in real life, if at all.

For this article, I googled “boycott…” and let the search engine optimise the things I saw. Three of the most popular results were the boycott of Chinese products, the boycott of the upcoming Aamir Khan starrer ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’, and the boycott of jewellery brand Tanishq. So let’s break it down one by one, shall we?

The boycott of Chinese products has its roots in the strained political relationship between India and China. After the 2020 announcement of an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, the movement to boycott Chinese products was launched. While the reasoning might be sound, the risks of an embargo on Indian-Chinese trades outweigh the benefits. The main roadblock is that we do not have alternatives to products made in China at the price that we are now used to. Budget-friendly Chinese products are the backbone of a society that is facing massive unemployment and systemic poverty issues. Additionally, we import a lot more from China than China does from us, so reducing trade won’t affect them as much as it will affect us.

Secondly, Titan-owned jewellery brand Tanishq has been under fire lately for its socially progressive ads depicting everything from Hindu-Muslim unity, to a fire-cracker-free Diwali, to the remarriage of a single mother. The brand has faced negative feedback to these ads in the form of accusations of Love Jihad, and people have even gone so far as to attack a store in Gujarat, resulting in the ads being pulled from the brand’s official platforms. On the other hand, they also faced criticism for not standing up to the trolls and ceasing to run the ads because of the adverse reaction. The clearest effect of this kind of reaction is that Tanishq will simply stop running ads that could be deemed ‘against Indian culture’ and return to the maddening mundanity of stereotypical jewellery ads that we have seen for years.

Last, but most definitely not least, the latest in a string of boycotted Bollywood movies is Aamir Khan’s upcoming movie Laal Singh Chaddha, featuring himself and Kareena Kapoor Khan in key roles. The reasoning for the boycott of this movie has nothing to do with the movie itself, but more to do with the actors in it. Indians on Twitter have raised offence to the fact that both Kapoor and Khan have made apparent ‘anti-national’ statements in the past. Opposingly, we do not see this kind of boycott culture in any other film industry in India, least of all in the South.

But boycotting things does not really have the effect that Indian Twitter wants it to. Simply fighting about things on the internet has no real-life consequences, as we have evidently not learned. For example, even after boycotting the platform (ironically, on Twitter itself), nobody seems to have actually deleted their accounts. Boycotted movies will still make billions or millions at the very least, people will still buy Chinese products and eat fried rice as a hangover cure, and Titan has made a net profit of 21 billion so far in 2022.

Not to mention that these boycotts will be forgotten in two weeks time when we find something else to boycott. Perhaps a book, this time?

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