On Monday, international pop star Rihanna took to Twitter to tweet about the farmers’ protests to her 10 crore followers, which read, “Why aren’t we talking about this?! #FarmersProtest”, she questioned. Since then, global support has been pouring in highlighting India’s Farmers’ struggle, with international celebrities, politicians, and social activists taking to social media to talk about it.
Alarmed by the growing support and attention, the farmers’ struggle began receiving, India’s Foreign Ministry issued statements indicating that the issue was the country’s internal problem and foreigners should not talk about it. In opposition to the #FarmersProtest hashtag, the Ministry has devised hashtags such as, #IndiaTogether and #IndiaAgainstPropoganda, which were tweeted by several celebrity supporters of the government.
Tweets that read, “Farmers constitute an extremely important part of our country. And the efforts being undertaken to resolve their issues are evident. Let’s support an amicable resolution, rather than paying attention to anyone creating differences”, were being circulated on social media. According to social networking experts, the circulating tweets have originated from the BJP’s IT Cell.
These tweets have been copied and pasted by many celebrities in India. Bollywood Actor Akshay Kumar and badminton player Saina Nehwal are among the personalities who have posted the IT cell propaganda. In this regard, netizens have taken celebrities to task on the social networking site.
Through sarcastic posts, Netizens pointed that these celebrities had forgotten to remove the “Pleading hands” emoji stickers in the copy-paste tweet.