Indian Censors Criticize Commercial for Flavored Condoms

A commercial for DKT India's XXX brand of flavored condoms is not meant for unrestricted viewing and should not be shown during daytime hours, said the Advertising Standards Council of India and the Censor Board. The ad for the strawberry-, banana- and chocolate-flavored condoms features the tagline, "What is your flavor of the night?"

"The campaign is not in good taste," said Censor Board Chairperson Sharmila Tagore. "Everybody is complaining, asking me how such an ad can be allowed to run," said the well-known film actress, who added she has asked federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi to pull the commercial from daytime broadcasts. "The ad is being telecast during the Champions Trophy [cricket] matches, which are watched by everybody including children."

Tagore, an AIDS activist and UNICEF goodwill ambassador, stressed that condom use is important. "But this ad is obscene," she said. The commercial should only run after 11 p.m. or in movie theaters with "Adult" certification, she said.

A senior official with DKT India said the message behind the commercial is not to promote oral sex but to encourage couples who are repulsed by the smell of latex. "We have approval from Doordarshan [the country's state-run television] to run the ads," he said. "We want to use cricket as a vehicle to promote condom usage."

The government in India -- which has the world's highest HIV/AIDS caseload with 5.7 million infections -- is running a campaign to promote condom use in a bid to control the spread of the disease.

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