Amitabh, Youth Ki Awaaz and BYJUs – How socially aware citizens are taking on big shots and winning

The socially aware netizens across the country are making their voices heard. Big Bollywood celebrities, companies, and woke leftist portals are being set in their place. From Amitabh Bachchan terminating the contract with a Pan Masala brand to BYJUs dropping Shahrukh Khan to Youth Ki Awaaz – a leftist portal taking down a deranged article promoting Hindumisia – the netizens are showing their might.

As reported by TFI, Edu-tech giant BYJUs recently halted its association and pulled all advertisements featuring Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan with immediate effect following his son Aryan Khan’s arrest last Saturday (October 2) by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).

Reportedly, Shahrukh was being paid a hefty amount of Rs 3-4 crore annually by the IPO bound company to endorse the brand since 2017. The company stopped all ads airing and featuring Shahrukh. Moreover, it pulled the plug on ads for which it had made bookings in advance.

Social media users had started to call out the company after Aryan Khan was found as a key suspect during a drug bust on Cordelia cruise ship. Along with Aryan, two accomplices, Arbaz Merchant, and Munmun Dhamecha were arrested and booked for the consumption, sale, and purchase of contraband under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.

#UPDATE | We've intercepted some persons. The probe is underway. Drugs have been recovered. We're investigating 8-10 persons: Sameer Wankhede, Zonal Director, NCB, Mumbai

"I can't comment on it", says Wankhede on being asked, "Was any celebrity present at the party?" pic.twitter.com/BxBOODT0wg

— ANI (@ANI) October 2, 2021

BYJU’s is a Bangalore-based company founded in 2008 by Divya Gokulnath and Byju Raveendran. Through its ‘Byju’s learning app’, which was launched in 2015, the company has taken the EduTech environment in India by storm.

Read More: BYJU’s drops Shahrukh Khan from its ads

Amitabh Bachchan terminating contract citing innocence

Similarly, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan was forced to sever ties with Pan Masala company ‘Kamala Pasand’, days after the commercial was aired and he received extensive backlash from the public. Reportedly, Amitabh in his blog claimed that he was not aware of the ‘tobacco’ product he was advertising. However, when he came to know about it, he terminated the contract and returned the money.

“Upon checking why this sudden move – it was revealed that when Mr Bachchan became associated with the brand, he wasn’t aware that it falls under surrogate advertising.” read the blog.

Read More: Dear Amitabh Bachchan, you fully knew what you were getting into so stop the ‘innocence’ charade

However, Mr Bachchan claiming that he wasn’t aware of the product he was advertising is rich and cute considering he must have signed all the requisite contracts himself after carefully going through it.

Moreover, any layman, over the years, watching such fancy surrogate advertisements on television understands what product these pan masala brands are trying to sell. By portraying himself as a simpleton, Amitabh was merely attempting to keep the gullible netizens away. However, people saw through Amitabh’s charade and called him out once again for trying to portray himself as the victim.

Read More: Amitabh Bachchan never spoke a word when liberals attacked Hinduism but declared himself ‘Not a Hindu’

Youth Ki Awaaz

Recently, Youth Ki Awaaz – a news portal that claims to be a writing platform for students was forced to delete an article titled “How I Made My Grandfather See The Sexism In Ramayana At The Age Of 80”, written by Mrittika Mallick, after aware netizens called out the abrasive, false and strawman-induced article.

It was the Hindu IT Cell (HIC) that first raised the issue and said, “Youth Ki Awaaz, we are giving you the deadline of 5 hours to apologise and remove the objectionable content, or we will take the appropriate and stern legal action against you. Mocking and maligning our culture and deities won’t be tolerated in any manner. Your time starts now.”

After the pressure was mounted, the magazine was forced to delete the article within three hours. It informed about the deletion by tweeting, “Hello, under Section 79 of the IT Act, Youth Ki Awaaz is an intermediary and an open platform where anyone can publish a post. We understand that this post hurts your sentiments. We apologise for the same and have taken the post down from all our social media handles. Thank you.”

Finally, @YouthKiAwaaz has apologised and accepted their mistake. So we have decided not to go ahead with legal recourse against them.
Our message is loud and clear, we will not tolerate any sort of activism or mockery which hurts our religious sentiments.

जय श्री राम || pic.twitter.com/j2j7jwOMZw

— Hindu IT Cell (@HinduITCell) October 10, 2021

The article was deleted but its archive link was still available and one of the paragraphs of the article read, “As I brought into light Sita’s feelings that were always belittled by Ram, her being constantly victimized, and of course Ram being an absolute patriarchal, misogynistic, and egoistic war hero, I saw feelings of confusion in my grandfather’s eyes. A religious belief held so strong for ages, completely shattered by a few words like ‘patriarchy’, ‘misogyny’, ‘rape’ is hard to accept. He was shaken, but he did not argue, for he knew what I said was all true.”

Despite mountains of evidence, Ramayana and Mahabharata were reduced to myths for the writer of the article, “If age-old myths like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have such fatally flawed men, why are they at all worshipped even today and the women still blamed? It was never possible to remove the Islamophobia in my grandparents’ hearts, but narratives like these do arouse questions in their own religion and religious heroes. Unless the strong pillars of a conceited belief in faith bears cracks, no human can possibly welcome new ideas.”

However, in all the aforementioned cases, justice was served when the loud and aware netizens jumped in. We at TFI are no proponents of cancel culture, which is another invention of the left cabal, but when a line is crossed, the netizens are well within their rights to gather around and raise their voice.