As folks in the “persuasion industries” of advertising and publicity are fond of saying, branding is everything. The government’s decision to shun the obvious beard-topi imagery to depict minorities, and opt for five no-fuss, “integrated” characters, and a punchy “aap badhenge, desh badhega” is certainly a welcome break. Visual cliches signal a dead spot in the imagination — but equally, they serve as important mental shortcuts, so the way to fight persistent stereotypes is to replace them with a diversity of images. Replacing minority stock characters with new possibilities, like Abida the Muslim medical student or Parvinder the Sikh pilot, is a small and refreshing jolt to our circuitry.

Anyone with a passing familiarity of Doordarshan and its nation-welding project will remember the national integration tableaux where the Indian state composed its own image through these public-service advertisements — whether it was about population control or “unity in diversity” or schooling. There are ideological assumptions embedded into these texts — they make bids on how viewers will react to the world around them. (The audience, in turn, may take what fits or discard these “messages” — their response is by no means uncomplicated identification.) But either way, when one is battered with images of Muslim backwardness or religious extremism, it is important to counter them with images of ordinary citizens getting on with their lives. Recall the stirring and effective ads right after 9/11 in the US — a montage of citizens, of different ages, races and religions looking straight into the camera to say, “I am an American.”

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