Business: The Dangers of Wit

The world’s least inhibited air traveler has long been Air-India International’s advertising symbol, a little maharajah with striped turban and quivering wax mustaches. He thinks nothing of matching entrechats with a Moscow ballerina or—since transatlantic service began in May ­swapping his turban for a Texan’s Stetson and a pair of shooting irons. So distinctive is the maharajah that the American Society of Travel Agents in 1959 voted AII first place in a 400-entry travel poster contest. This year the Indian Society of Advertisers gave its top award to the maharajah’s originator, Air-India’s commercial director, S. K. (“Bobby”) Kooka. Despite such honors, Indian politicians last week were demanding the elimination of the maharajah.

Spoons & Spooners. The trouble began when Member A. M. Tariq rose in the lower house, Lok Sabha, in New Delhi to point an accusing finger at the passenger information booklet, “Foolishly Yours,” put out by the government-ownedline. Though the booklet, decorated with a cover showing the maharajah in his undershirt bowing low after spreading his robe Sir Walter Raleigh-fashion, for a boarding lady passenger, had been in use for twelve years and 400,000 copies distributed, Tariq said he was just now beginning to burn at the “ridiculing” of the Indian people. One cartoon showed a potbellied, satisfied male passenger giving a fond farewell embrace to an airline hostess who, meanwhile, is retrieving the airline’s silverware from his pockets. Asked Tariq: “is it proper to portray Indian Nationals Baling cutlery?” At that a fellow legislator noted throbbingly that the spooning spoon-snatcher was wearing a Gandhi cap, the headdress identified with the dominant Congress Party.

Tariq was even more outraged at the way sex found its way into Air-India’s publicity. Near New Delhi’s Palam Airport, he said he had seen an Air-India billboard displaying “the nude figure of an Indian lady” riding on a white horse. This brought Transport Minister Dr Paramsiva Subbarayan to his feet to defend Indian womanhood. The lady was no Indian, said Subbarayan, but an Englishwoman Lady Godiva. Not in the least mollified, Speaker of the House Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, in shocked tones related that he had seen signs in Air-India planes warning lady passengers: When lights are switched off, take care that the pilot does not kiss you” No Back-to-Bed Call. Air-India publicity men indignantly denied that their planes carry such beware-of-kisses signs But the misunderstanding was at least partly Air-India’s fault. In its kidding way, “Foolishly Yours” had glamorized Air-India s skippers as “a cross between Gauguin and Lady Chatterley’s lover,” warning husbands, “When you see your captain making a beeline for you transfer your wife and wallet to the other side.” It also had titillated hopes for airborne dalliance by informing passengers on overnight sleeper flights that, contrary the practice in certain renowned Indian hotels, no predawn gong would warn straying husbands or wives to get back into their respective beds

At session’s end, irate Speaker Ayyangar scheduled a 30-minute debate on Air-India International’s flip public relations image, then canceled the debate after mends of the airline management asked him to tone down the attack. In thus sniping at Air-India, politicians gave more ammunition to Socialist-minded Indians who are ever alert to attack the successful line for its free enterprise way of doing things. The line was founded in 1948 by J.R.D. Tata, 55, India’s leading industrialist, was nationalized in 1953 (Tara got $28 million for his stock) though Tata has continued to run it without pay. At the same time, the government took over a profitable Tata-owned domestic line, and seven others, to form the domestic Indian Airlines Corp.

Since then Air-India has steadily expanded until it flies 30,000 route miles to Japan, Australia, Africa, Britain and the U.S.—the first Asian line to fly the Atlantic—added Boeing jets to its fleet. While Air-India makes money, the domestic Indian Airlines loses partly because of its higher fuel costs and the necessity of flying some uneconomic routes.

While some younger Indians saw nothing more than an old-fogy reaction to Western-style promotion, the opinion was by no means unanimous. As for the maharajah symbol, the Bombay weekly Current, edited by D. F. Karaka, a friend ol Tata, said, “it is true that elsewhere in the world they still believe that India is a country of rajahs, snake charmers and fakirs. But should a national airline doing business abroad continue to encourage an idea that is not only false but stupid?”