Arshdeep’s one drop and Pakistani machinery turned him into a Khalistani

Cricket is the game of hits and misses. You miss one second of concentration and boom. Catch is dropped. Similar stuff happened with young and inexperienced Arshdeep Singh. At the best it deserved a cricket meme. But Khalistani supportive Pakistani machinery used the opportunity to declare him as Khalistani.

Drop catch and narrative war

In the nerve wrecking Asia Cup match between India and Pakistan, came a moment when India had the opportunity to seize the game. Asif Ali missed the flight and the ball ended up ballooning in the air. In cricketing terms, it was a dolly for fielder Arshdeep. But probably he thought it was too easy and the ball slipped out of his hand.

As soon as the catch was dropped, conspiracy theorists started to term him Khalistani. Firstly, it seemed as if people from India had fallen for the trap. Mohammad Zubair, a self-proclaimed fact-checker also pushed the narrative. But soon the truth was out. It was shoveled down by Pakistani supporters.

Pakistani handles started the drama

First such tweet which caught the attention of a vigilant Indian was that of Zaid J Hamid, a Pakistan political conspiracy theorist. Through his tweet he signalled that when war between India and Pakistan will happen then a Sikh, (used to represent Arshdeep here) will help.

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Apparently, they got the tip when W.S. Khan, a Digital editor of Nikkei Asia was one of the first ones to put out such a tweet. Moments after Arshdeep dropped the catch, he tweeted, “Arshdeep is clearly a part of the Pakistan-backed Khalistan movement.”

Followers of both of them started to peddle the lies and their tweets were widely circulated. The fake narrative really spread like a wildfire when Duniya News, a Pakistani news channel with 33 lakh twitter followers called Arshdeep a Khalistani.

Lies exposed

Then there was no stopping. These Pakistani stooges went on to tinker with the Wikipedia page of Arshdeep as well. They even edited the word “Indian squad” and changed it to “Khalistani squad”. To sum it all, wherever the word India was written in his bio, it was changed to Khalistan. Anshul Saxena, a programmer and ethical hacker tracked the IP address of those users who tampered with the Wikipedia page. They turned out to be based out of Pakistan.

 Damage was already done

The page was restored, but the disinformation narrative had started to jolt various players. Harbhajan Singh, former Indian cricketer and AAP member had already came down heavily on those who called Arshdeep a Khalistani.

Various others like his IPL team Kings XI Punjab, S. Badrinath, Irfan Pathan and Mohammad Hafiz came forward to defend him.

Strict action needed from both public and government

 Meanwhile, looking at the scale of the issue and its related national security concerns, the Indian government has summoned Wikipedia executives over the incident. Most likely they will go Scott free due to the web of jurisdictional issues around actions on them.

However, those Pakistani handles should not go unscathed. Dropping catches is part of the game. It is not a blot on nationalistic credentials, otherwise every Pakistani player would have been a foreign national. These handles need to be taught a thorough lesson by the public and they should be made irrelevant.

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