Former cricketer, Harbhajan Singh’s tweet had ruffled quite a few feathers yesterday when he was merely attempting to laud and congratulate the ISRO for their massive achievement on the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-2. Into this scenario, he had chipped in with a congratulatory tweet:
Some countries have moon on their flags
🇵🇰🇹🇷🇹🇳🇱🇾🇦🇿🇩🇿🇲🇾🇲🇻🇲🇷While some countries having their flags on moon
🇺🇸 🇷🇺 🇮🇳 🇨🇳#Chandrayaan2theMoon— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) July 22, 2019
Harbhajan with this tweet took an innocuous dig at the countries who had the moon on their flag and compared with nations like USA, Russia, China, and India, who went on to explore the Moon and plant their own flags. However, this did not go down with our left-liberals, who went berserk with Harbhajan Singh’s innocuous dig.
Harbhajan Singh however, unabashedly spoke to Republic World on how unaffected he was with the sudden bombardment by the left-liberals.
He stated, “It’s crazy to think it has anything to do with religion. I love my country, culture and respect all religions. I think they’re beautiful.” The World Cup-winner further added, “They are nobody in my life and it doesn’t matter what they think of me. What matters is what they think of India. Are they proud Indians or not? I am a proud Indian.” In the end, he concluded by saying, “For me, the nation is always first.”
Several Twitterati had come forward, alleging him of being communal and religious. It was absurd that a tweet on India’s achievement was perceived as an attack on Islam.
Leading the pack was controversial CPI leader, Kavitha Krishnan, who felt seemingly aghast on Harbhajan’s tweet:
May I disturb this bigoted story of yours with some reality? This is the Nepal flag, also with the crescent moon on it. Literally 'flagging' all 'Muslim' countries, is the essence of Islamophobic baiting & profiling. Wish you cd learn from Sri Lankan cricketers & rise above this. pic.twitter.com/HMPkexOE2V
— Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) July 23, 2019
Not too far behind was newly minted politician and controversial JNU student leader Shehla Rashid Shora, who retweeted another criticism of Harbhajan Singh:
However, this absurd criticism over Harbhajan’s tweet was something that was unjustly blown out of proportions. Harbhajan Singh had merely congratulated India for their achievement with a hilarious tweet. Moreover, Nepal wasn’t even included in this list, and the moon in the Nepalese flag represented an approach entirely different from what the flags in Harbhajan’s tweet represented. However, this did not stop the left-liberals from becoming hysteric over a simple joke. No wonder why the netizens did not take this absurd criticism lightly and literally trolled these people left, right and center:
Its a clever punch line, where is the offence in it? No need to paint religion and start a border war on twitter. ( also why is every paki response "get toilets first"? Is that the only thing you have more of than India?)
— Kasturi (@KasthuriShankar) July 22, 2019
https://twitter.com/SarmaIND/status/1153569171596169216
May i interrupt you miss
Our presence is not only moon 🌓
But we have presence on mars too..Pls ask these countries to get other planets symbols on their flag …so that we can reach their too 🚀🚀🛸
😇😊😅 pic.twitter.com/TteOM1QaJk
— Akkiakash1 (@Akkiakash110) July 23, 2019
Moreover, this is not the first time that celebrities have been hounded for seemingly innocuous jokes by the left-liberals. When the Gurmehar Kaur controversy took the nation by storm, cricketer Virender Sehwag posted a hilarious post on the social media about the same, on which actor Randeep Hooda had a good laugh.
The left-liberals took this as a challenge to their authority, and not only hounded them but also forced them to apologize for sharing an innocuous meme that offended none. Yet, these very people expect us to be tolerant, even when our country is in real danger in terms of attacks like 26/11, Uri, Pulwama, etc. As such, their criticism of Harbhajan Singh’s innocuous tweet is not only uncalled for, but also completely unjustified as well.
It is astounding that people like Shehla Rashid and Kavita Krishnan keep sermonising about FoE but cannot take a simple joke without terming it bigotry and creating unnecessary outrage.
