Doninger and the street named Tolerance

Doninger and the street named Tolerance

Recently Penguin Books decided to scrap Wendy Doninger’s controversial book about Hindus, bowing to the demand of Hindu activist groups. The regular p-sec crowd obviously went into an expected paroxysm of faux anguish and decried the ‘creeping onset of Hindu fundamentalism’. One of my p-sec friends promptly bestowed the epithet of ‘Hindu Taliban’ on the groups that made this (IMO eminently desirable and just) denouement possible. Many people with a peculiar understanding of the concept of ‘free speech’ (most of these worthies are Indian-Americans. This, I suppose, makes them eminently eligible to comment on the concept of free speech because they have probably read about the famous 1^st amendment in the US Bill of Rights – at least in their own exalted opinion of themselves.), glibly declared that ‘Hindu Taliban’ are trampling on the free speech. Without getting into the specifics of why this Doninger’s book was found unacceptable by the Hindu groups (I would happily get into the specifics if the p-sec crowd would get their heads out of their nether regions and actually went down to the specifics instead of resorting to slogan-shouting. Fat chance of that ever happening!), this episode still raises important questions that I wish to address. 

First question is on the concept of ‘free speech’ itself. I freely admit that US is truly a society that has actually implemented the concept of free speech in its most enlightened form (there are obviously major issues with that too as evidenced by Citizens United Vs FEC). I bow my head in respect (and express my eternal gratitude) to the founding fathers of America that they made it possible for the inheritors of their republic to implement a really robust, fair and equitable regime of free speech. However, free speech DOES NOT equate to ‘free of consequence speech’, even in America. And this is a very important point that most with a shallow understanding of the 1^st amendment do not grasp. In America, you are free to say whatever you want but you are not free from consequences of whatever you say. Thus when a TV network finds one of its executives, in her private speech that she negligently allowed to become public, denigrated certain demographic groups, she was not prosecuted (because that WOULD be against her 1^st amendment rights) but she was certainly fired. So there can always be consequences to free speech; even in America. 

India does NOT have a free speech guarantee enshrined in its constitution, at least not the same way it is in US constitution. In India, a speech/action that can be deemed to hurt the sentiments of any religion, caste or myriad other demographic groupings is banned by law. Thus in India, a Terry Jones CANNOT burn a copy of the Holy Koran (Which, incidentally, he is constitutionally allowed to do under the 1^st amendment in USA) – legally. Do I want an India where a Terry Jones would be LEGALLY allowed to do that? NO! An emphatic and unequivocal NO! In USA, Dan Brown’s bestseller novel ‘Da Vinci Code’ was celebrated and turned into a movie. In India, the book and the movie are banned because they hurt the sentiments of various Christian groups. In India, Taslima Nasreen’s famous novel ‘Lajja’ is banned because it hurt the sentiments of several Muslim groups. She was hounded out of the country under the able auspices of the current UPA dispensation. And the most famous of them all, Salman Rushdi’s ‘Satanic Verses’ is banned in India and most of the Muslim countries and the author still lives under a threat to his life. 

As against these (and numerous other) examples of Hindus’ commendable sensitivity to the sentiments of the minorities, what do Hindus get in return? There is the example of an M F Hussein, painting the ‘naked’ picture of Hindu goddess Saraswati. There is example of the Southern Baptists, the largest denomination in America (not just some two-bit Terry Jones in some boondocks in Florida) nonchalantly denigrating 1 billion Hindus, on the occasion of Diwali, by claiming that (Without Jesus) they are lost in darkness or some such egregious nonsense. There are numerous examples of images of Hindu deities being plastered over bikinis, shoes, toilet seats and more, by non-Hindu provocateurs. 

Now my question to my masochistic p-sec friends is, is tolerance a one-way street? For those Hindus, for whom nothing is sacred, there is no sacrilege in what Doninger has written. The front cover illustration of her book depicts Lord Krishna sitting on the buttocks of a naked woman. Doninger wades into Ramayana and depicts a sexual relationship between Seeta and Lakshman. She intrepidly ploughs into Mahabharat and claims that Kunti was raped by Surya (Sun God) and made pregnant with Karna. These are just a couple of examples of Doninger’s ‘scholarly’ treatise on Hinduism. If this is not a sacrilege to you, then I suppose you are beyond redemption.

A new case study for the MBA students

This case is about two competing products in the market. Let’s call them B & C. Product C has had an illustrious history, it has been in the market for over a century. There was a time when it had almost a 100% market share. Even today C has the largest market share. Product B also has a rather long history but has always been second (or third or fourth) in terms of national market share. There are geographical niches where B has a larger market share than C. There are other small, geographically niche products out there with locally significant market shares. But really speaking only B and C have national footprints. 

B & C, since they are directly competing against each other in the same national market, have been at loggerheads with each other. C has an innovative marketing strategy, perfected over decades. It doesn’t bother to tout its own product benefits. It simply attacks its rival products, especially B. C claims that product B has highly toxic side-effects, especially for the various customers segments that are ultra-loyal to C. B claims that C promises a lot of benefits but doesn’t actually deliver any of them. The C Company also screws its customers (who are also its shareholders) by skimming off a large part of the product revenue and stashes it away offshore in the name of its directors. But most importantly, B Company has major objections to how C Company markets its products. Though C claims to be a national brand, it has perfected the art of finely dividing its national market on the basis of demographics and appoints its local salesreps that appeal only to their like-demographics and screw everybody else. 

B and C (and the other smaller geographically dispersed competing products) claim to offer the same benefits to the customers, and so do the other products (let’s call them DZ or khichadi, they make you dizzy with their marketing campaign strategies anyway). But there is absolutely no other similarity between B & C. 

But C has been having some problems recently – a couple of decades. A number of C executives have been leaving C to start their own start-ups in various geographies. Most of the geos where non-C (or non-B) products (from DZ khichadi) have captured higher market share, belong to ex-C executives. But C didn’t mind these upstart start-ups. Even though they took away some market share from C, they succeeded in keeping B out of their respective markets. 

Then in the last couple of years everything changed. A new product, let’s call it product A, suddenly burst on the scene. It was a start-up company, headed by a charismatic, brilliant IIT engineer. Product A also offered the same benefits to the customers, but with a twist. They claimed that product A would remove all the wastage that was an intrinsic part of product C. Essentially, ‘A’ offered to lower the cost of the benefits offered by C and also promised to drastically improve the benefits that were claimed by C. Was it competing against product C or product B? Or both? And what about the other D-Z products? Was it competing against all of them? Did ‘A’ actually have any benefits that were different from B or C or D-Z? 

Most interestingly, ‘A’ has adopted an intriguingly disruptive two-pronged marketing strategy. On one hand, it has exclusively focused on the C Company’s skimming activities. ‘A’ claims that it will stop all the skimming. It has also bucketed B Company in the same league. The other interesting aspect of ‘A’s marketing is that it is outdoing C in every aspect of marketing. Since C offers freebies to its customers, A is offering even more freebies. Since C tries to offer reservations to some of the demographic niches, A is offering even more reservations. Since C offers to deport foreign authors who invite the ire of some of its demographic niches, A hobnobs with the leaders of that demographic group and even goes to the extent of befriending the guy who offered a reward for a murder of the said author. In essence, ‘A’ is outdoing C in every respect as its marketing strategy.

Now the questions to discuss for the class are:

-          If ‘A’ is marketing itself as a more pure version of C, is it likely to capture the market share of C or B?

-          If ‘A’ is not offering even a token marketing gimmick that may compete with B’s core campaign, why would B’s loyal customers switch to ‘A’?

-          If ‘A’ is professing to devour the market shares of everybody – from B to Z with special emphasis on C – but going out of the way to ape C and D-Z then why should B take on A?

-          If some of the ‘B’ customers are switching to ‘A’, are they really the customers of B in the first place?

-          And lastly, what happens if ‘A’ gives the same customer experience as C? After all, like any new product, the proof of the pudding is in eating it, no?