Kalyan Jewellers' ad showed a star and a dark-skinned child — the internet called it out

In April 2015, Kalyan Jewellers, one of India's largest jewellery chains, published a print advertisement featuring Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan reclining on a couch while a dark-skinned young boy held a parasol over her. The image was meant to evoke luxury and royalty. What it evoked instead was a colonial tableau — a light-skinned woman being served by a dark-skinned child.

The backlash was immediate and international. An open letter to the actress called the ad 'insidiously racist' and described the child's positioning as evoking slavery. Social media amplified the criticism across India and beyond. The ad became a case study in how visual shorthand — parasol, reclining figure, attending child — carries historical weight that a creative team may not intend but cannot disclaim.

Kalyan Jewellers withdrew the advertisement and issued an apology. The brand survived, but the ad became a permanent reference point in discussions about race, skin colour and advertising in India — a market where fairness-cream marketing had long normalised the very hierarchy the ad was accused of dramatising.