Google India's Powerful Search Ad Touches On The India/Pakistan Partition

Google India has created a powerful and very touching ad for its search engine that has had quite a positive impact on both Indian and Pakistani viewers, considering the contentious relations between the two countries since the 1947 partition.

“Reunion” portrays two childhood friends, now elderly men, who haven’t seen each other since they were separated by the 1947 partition that created India and Pakistan from the old British empire in South Asia. Partition sparked a mass exodus as millions of Muslims and Hindus fled across the new borders amid religious violence.

In the ad, one of the men reminisces to his granddaughter about his happy childhood in Lahore and how he used to steal sweets from a shop with his best friend, who the ad implies is Muslim. His granddaughter uses the search engine to track down the childhood friend in the Pakistani city. Then, with the help of the Pakistani man’s grandson (and naturally, Google), she arranges a journey to New Delhi for a surprise reunion.

Kudos to Google for using this ad campaign to actually humanize the issue. 

Advertising with a heart.

See if you can watch this without getting misty eyed.

The beautiful haunting music was created by Clinton Cerejo, sung by Piyush Mishra, with lyrics by Neelesh Jain, a creative director at Ogilvy and Mather.



For more on this story and the troubles between the two countries: Gulf News

This version translates the song as well. It's beneath the Hindi subtitles.