Justice in India

I have earlier on this blog laughed at luxury pen maker Montblanc for marketing a Gandhi pen in India. Not just that it costs 1.1 million rupees ($23,000), the equivalent of an apartment in India, it is also against the law to use the figure of Gandhi without permission from the central government.
Accordingly, Montblanc had to apologize to the Kerala High Court last month for violating the Emblems and Names Act, and has stopped selling the pen in India.
The Financial Times calls the fiasco a “peril of blundering into India’s cultural minefield.” I call it not using your head. When marketing executives take a curious and humble interest in other cultures than their own, these things don’t happen. When they don’t, we get the Honda Cunt, the Mitsubishi Masturbator and the Montblanc Gandhi.
And the rest of us get something to laugh about. Shiva bless ’em.