India jewellery ad dispelling myths on transgenders wins hearts

At a time when the Indian society struggling to break down misconceptions of the transgender community, an advertisement for traditional Indian jewellery portrayed a transwoman's struggle with empathy wins millions of heart in India.

The one-minute-40-second video charts the story of transition of a trans woman - an awkward teenager with facial hair and self-doubt who transforms into a beautiful confident bride, report BBC.

With 22-year-old Meera Singhania Rehani in the lead, the video by Kerala-based jewellery house Bhima opted to run the Pure As Love campaign with the intention to share a social message by showing the hardship of a transgendered person.

Titled Pure as Love, the ad has been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube and 1.4 million times on Instagram since its release in April and has received rave reviews.

Campaign mastermind in online marketing head Navya Rao said that her colleagues were worried and anxious when she first proposed this idea for the campaign.

Rao also said that she was fully aware that the effort could have backfired.

"All our previous ads had happy heterosexual brides. So we were worried about how people would perceive it and react to it.

"Most of our stores are in rural parts of the state. We were not sure how much exposure people there would have had to these issues."

The one minute 40-second video campaign, which featured Meera Singhania Rehani, 22, illustrated the love and acceptance that she received from her family when each milestone in her life was commemorated by the gold they presented her.

Meera, a student of sociology at Delhi University and part-time model who came out to her family two years back, says when she first heard about the ad, she "was very sceptical".

"I didn't want someone to appropriate my trans identity for commercial use. I was also nervous since the film involved transition and as a pre-transition person I'm shown as a man with a beard.

"But when I read the story and researched about the director, I said yes. And I'm glad I did. Doing this has also helped me become more comfortable with myself," she told the BBC.

India has an estimated two million transgender people, and in 2014 the Supreme Court ruled that they have equal rights under the law as people of other genders.

But abuse and stigma remain. Many transgender people are thrown out of their homes by their families, and most still make a living by singing and dancing at weddings or child births, or through begging and prostitution.

Kerala is India's most trans-friendly state - in 2015, it became the first to unveil a Transgender Policy to end stigma and discrimination towards the sexual minority group. But transphobia remains as real in Kerala as anywhere else in India.

Sudha Pillai, a writer and brand strategist at Firework, a video platform, described the ad as "revolutionary".

"I watched it on a Malayalam news channel and I thought they might not sell any jewellery, but if the idea was to grab eyeballs, they did it," she said.

"I've never seen any traditional brand do something so drastic. To take that kind of a risk for a traditional jeweller was revolutionary," she added.

In India, where films and popular culture still mostly portray transgender people as caricatures, Ms Pillai says ad campaigns like this can be a game-changer.

"Advertisements and TV series are much more impactful than movies. They are played repeatedly in homes and have the power to change opinions. There can be a bit of resistance to them initially, but they can be a game-changer."

Ms Pillai says when she praised the ad on social media, she mostly expected responses from conservative Indians and angry trolls.

"There were some differences in opinion, but the number of those who felt threatened was tiny. More than 95% responses were positive and that in itself was very heartening," she said.