After a variety of Rakhi merchandise bearing words such as “Tu toh adopted hai” and “You are adopted, but we still love you” or even worse “Tujhe toh dustbin se le ke aye the (We picked you up from a dustbin)” surfaced on different e-commerce sites, members of the adoptive community took offense and demanded that their sale be stopped immediately.
The merchandise which was pitched at ‘sibling satire’ about how brothers and sisters ‘teased’ each other, was in poor taste and appeared to suggest that adoptive children did not deserve to be loved as much as biological children.
In a statement, the adoptive community says, “We strongly condemn the rakhi products being marketed which treat adoption as a joke and being sold as an ‘opportunity for brothers and sisters to tease each other’. Such products are highly offensive and have outraged the adoptive community because of the insensitivity they display and the potential they have to damage and hurt adopted children. The adoption fraternity demands immediate withdrawal of these products and requests consumers to absolutely boycott such offensive merchandise.”
Following the outrage, the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) reportedly wrote to Amazon India where the products were previously available. The products appear to have been taken down. According to the Times of India CARA wrote to Amazon on Saturday to remove all Rakhi merchandise that had sibling satire content that had the potential to cause emotional distress to adoptive children and their families.
The signed statement by members of the adoptive community may be viewed here:
