A conflict between culture & optics
ETimes May 19, 2026 09:39 AM
When Niranjan Mondal walked the Cannes red carpet in a dhuti-bandhgala, carrying the Bengali Babu aesthetic onto one of the world’s most photographed stages, two things happened simultaneously. Bengal felt seen. And Bengal felt conflicted. That tension matters. Both reactions are valid, and mixing them up helps no one.
The criticism writes itself. This is the land of Satyajit Ray. Of Ritwik Ghatak . Of a cinematic tradition so dense and serious that it changed the possibilities of world cinema. And now the conversation is about a content creator ’s red carpet moment, facilitated by a media company’s brand partnership. The discomfort is real. It is not snobbery, but the specific grief of a culture that knows what it’s capable of, while watching itself being represented by something considerably lighter.
But here is what that criticism possibly ignores: Niranjan Mondal was not there uninvited.
Somebody thought he was important enough to fly down, spotlight, and position on that stage. He did not crash Cannes, he was placed there deliberately, because his reach has value and his audience is real. To mock his presence is to misunderstand how the attention economy actually works, and more importantly, who benefits from it.
