Arshdeep Singh’s drop catch against against arch rivals Pakistan perhaps costed India the game but it gifted anti-India forces a lip smacking opportunity to portray India once again as a country rife with intolerance and hate. Pakistan, having lost all its real battles with India has taken the digital route to formant hatred and divisions in our society now for over two decades. They’ve succeeded at times to but now their lies are being called out.
Arshdeep’s who was subject to online trolling after the match isn’t news. In a nation that loves the game of cricket and their players, praise and abuse is part and parcel of the game but in this case the Arshdeep was accused of being a Khalistani agent.
In a well coordinated event the whole eco-system came alive. The usual media houses came down hard on the Indian fans.
Arshdeep Singh, Trolled For Missed Catch, Gets Punjab Leaders’ Support – NDTV
‘My request to all Indian fans…’: Pakistan legend urges people to stop ‘humiliating’ Arshdeep Singh for dropped catch – Hindustan Times
The Trolling Of Arshdeep Singh For Dropping One Catch Is A New Low & It Should Put Us To Shame – Scoopwhoop
‘Shame on such people who are putting our own guys down’: Harbhajan slams trolls for ‘cheap’ Arshdeep Singh remarks – Hindustan Times
The usual suspects: actors Swara Bhasker, Gul Panag and Pooja Bhatt, dialogue writer-lyricist Varun Grover, Rana Ayyub, Sadaf Jafar, Aditya Menon, Ashok Swain, and several others expressed their deep concern for the young sportsman and the nation.
But the leader of the pack Mohammed Zubair, was prepared to the T with a series of screenshots of Twitter users hurling “Khalistani” abuses at Arshdeep. And within minutes after the match the screenshots with tweets were out. And in what looked like a perfectly synchronised performance the troll army from Pakistan furiously tweeted and retweeted his post.
Thanks to some nationalistic online warriors like Ansul Saxena and Vijay Patel, it was revealed most of tweets, retweets, and likes and abuses came from across the border.
But by then the damage was done. Within few hours the malafide tweet gathered over 7,100 Retweets and over 19,000 likes.
Even a Pakistani journalist, W S Khan tweeted, “Arshdeep is clearly a part of the Pakistan-backed Khalistan movement. #INDvPAK”.
Singh’s Wikipedia page was also vandalised by an editor from Pakistan to reflect “Khalistan associations”.
The ministry noted that ‘no intermediary operating in India can permit this type of misinformation’.
For us Indians this was a game of sports but for toolkit gang this was an opportunity to portray India and its citizens in bad light on an international platform. This revelation puts into question many trolling accusations Indians have been accused of in the past, whether it is that of Sania Mirza, Irfan Pathan or Mohammed Shami.
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