Cobra and its many faces

What is Cobra?  its a poisonous snake I hear you say, its found in Asia and Africa and the name Cobra derives from a Portuguese word for snake (and from the Latin coluber). 

In Chattisgarh, India, CoBRA  (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) is a specialised unit of the Central Reserve Police Force and is known for its encounter killings which the villagers have stated are actually cold blooded killings.

In the UK government COBRA is a meeting which takes place at Downing Street. Its a the cross-departmental crisis committee that is formed to respond to national emergencies in the UK. Cobra stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms, or COBR. The last COBRA meeting was set up after the Bastille Day attack in Nice, July 2016.

But its Cobra Beer that I am interested in here. No, not because its founder, Lord Billamoria, was recently in the news for tax evasion but because I wanted to understand why after seeing a Cobra Beer advert in London I was left feeling really angry and upset. 

The advert was launched in 2014 when it first went out on television .

The advert poster (seen in magazines and at tube stations) shows an Asian man wearing an ‘entrepreneurial’ grey suit with a tie, a watch, tie clip, and a pocket handkerchief. His right arm is bent so that it comes up just below his waist and his right hand grips the lower part of an upright glass full of Cobra beer. The left hand rests on the shoulder of a female headless mannequin wearing a green bra and a tape measure round 'its' neck. 

Then we get the man's identity when the viewing reader is asked to: 

Meet THE BOSS.

and what does this THE BOSS do, well we are told that: 

By day, he makes premium beer… By night, he he makes premium brassieres, 

By day, complex recipe… By night, complex embroidery

By day, smooth…By night, supportive

By day, glasses….By night, cups

He has a nap at lunch. 

and then it ends with the words:

Impossibly smooth with Premium Beer Cobra and impossibly supportive with Premium Brassieres. 

The message is now clear, come night or day, the Asian man is (should be) always working and (should be) always be in charge. In the day, in charge of (his) work business and at night in charge of his family business (and relationships). This uniquely powerful smooth Asian (racist-patriarchal) personality can now be acquired by all beer drinkers and not just the 'lads'. The beer comes in a brown glass bottle with illustrations embedded into the bottle of palm trees, a snake charmer, a baby and an adult elephant, a brewery, a set of tilted weighing scales and then Cobra written in hindi script. These words and pictures are supposed to give us a 'sentimental' glimpse into the Cobra Beer history. Cobra consumers could even get a copy of the bra in the advert by clicking ‘Like’ on Cobra’s Impossibly Smooth Brassiere post on Facebook.

This new brand identity was designed to take sales of Cobra Beer beyond the existing UK Indian Restaurants . 

In this new identity The Boss doesn't just mean being ‘in charge and in control of your business and your appearance’ but it also means being in charge of others, especially women and especially their body and labour at in the day and in the night. Being the boss and being in charge means being smooth, he gets what he wants when he wants it  at work and at home. and thats what makes him happy and satisfied which is why he is smiling, because he is living his dream and having ‘fun’. 

But this smooth, controlling, brutal corporate image of masculinity hides it other face which with or without increasing alcohol consumption, is known to have direct links to rape and domestic violence and violence against women. 

As well as being the owner of Cobra Beer, Lord Billamoria has aligned with other right wing men and women in business and government like Manoj Ladwa and MP Priti Patel and spoken admiringly for another man in charge. Men like the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister in charge of Gujarat in 2002 when the BJP preplanned state sponsored pogram of murdering and raping over 2000 muslim minority women, children and men was carried out by Hindutva Fascists. 

Lord Billamoria is also an admirer of Margaret Thatcher and her entrepreneurial spirit as well as of Tony Blair whose 1999 House of Lords Act made it possible for him to become a Lord. His inspiration for this business also comes from his father who was an army general and his great grandfather who was an entreprenneur.

In 2012 Lord Billamoria’s Cobra Beer merged with the Canadian-American Molson Coors and then went on to set up a  brewery in Bihar and the Chief Minister at the time, Nitish Kumar, of course welcomed the merger with open arms. This being India’s poorest state, where there had been opposition to liquor especially from women who had experienced the effects of alcoholism in their families.

Cobra Beer of course has no links with Cobrapost which is an Indian news website and a television production house known for its investigative journalism.  Cobrapost in 2015 managed to get members of Ranveer Sena (a private army of Bihar’s upper caste landlords) to confess on tape of their involvement in six massacres of Dalits in central Bihar — Bathani Tola (1996), Laxmanpur Bathe (1997), Shankar Bigha (1995), Miyanpur and Ikwari. This same report also revealed that the Ranveer Sena received support from BJP politicians and were trained by army men. 

The creation of these corporate identities and state backing for them doesn't mean all men will follow them blindly I hear you say and anyway whats wrong with the idea of being in charge, surely its who is in charge and how they use that power? 

Yes, we have no choice but collectively continue challenging corporates like Cobra Beer and their right wing racist and sexist supporters in the state. It would be a small step towards the struggle for getting the right people into power...