© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
If you’re willing to spend a minute of your precious time and give in to the latest Twitter trend, Google ‘namak haraam country’ and you’ll find India pop-up as the suggested search result. But before anybody could even make sense of what this was all about, people – specially those from you know where – took to Twitter and attempted to mock India for being the ‘namak haraam country’. Yeah right.
Before you decide to shed some outrage and term this as “derogatory and unexpected from Google”, you should probably just relax and not care too much. The reason why India pops-up is pretty straightforward. ‘Namak haraam’ is a popular 1973 Hindi film starring Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and Rekha. Now, if India doesn’t pop-up next to a very popular Indian film, we’d be quite upset. We are, after all, proud of our film industry that even gives the careers of several actors from neighbouring nations a much-needed boost. (Read: Cross-border talent should be encouraged: Saif Ali Khan bats for Pakistani artists)
While it is not clear who was the first to post about the search, what was evident was a herd mentality that followed, with people not even bothering to check what the actual facts are. So much so, a Pakistani news channel decided to do a quick news bit on this, now viral, Google search. We suggest you watch the video because it is an excellent coverage of what makes important international news in that country.
The news anchor, with utmost seriousness, looks into the camera and divulges the ‘truth’ of India, followed quickly by shots of what seems like India and glaring shots of the now viral Google search. We understand the eagerness to report something so serious, but seriously, CHILL GUYS! Poor Google did not mean that India is a ‘traitor country’.
ALSO READ: Debates on Pakistan news channels after Uri attack have fun, but no facts
To back our earlier argument, type in ‘Mughal-E-Azam country’ and you will have Google showing you the Indian flag then too!
And our neighbour, Pakistan, is popular for their films too.
Pheww! But before they could figure this out, Twitterati went berserk. Here are some of the reactions!
And there were some who understood why this happened.
Now that we’ve established what the truth is, we’d like you to watch the Pakistani news channel report. Grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy :)
Guess who the joke is on now?
