NEW DELHI: A top Indian jewellery company has withdrawn an advert featuring Bollywood star and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan after activists slammed it as racist and for promoting child slavery.

A national English newspaper published the Kalyan Jewellers’ advertisement last week that showed a fair Bachchan bejewelled and decked in Indian regal attire, reclining under a parasol held by dark-skinned child.

The jewellers apologised, saying the ad was “intended to present the royalty, timeless beauty and elegance”.

“We have started the process of withdrawing this creative from our campaign,” the company said in a statement on its Facebook page late on Wednesday.

The move came after a group of activists criticised the 41-year-old for her involvement in the ad that resembled “17th and 18th century colonial European portraits of white aristocracy, depicting women being waited upon by their black “servants”.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2015

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